An aid ship that has been docked in Cyprus for close to a month has finally set sail for Gaza, taking almost 200 tonnes of aid in a pilot project to open a new sea route for aid to a population on the brink of famine.
A video showed the Open Arms boat departing the Mediterranean island’s southern port of Larnaca at an unknown time early on Tuesday. Government officials in Cyprus had said the exact timing of the vessel’s departure would not be released for security reasons.
However, maritime tracking sites showed the Open Arms in the eastern Mediterranean, slowly heading for Gaza. The boat is towing a barge containing flour, rice and protein as well as water and medicines – provisions that are desperately needed in the besieged coastal strip.
While the journey usually takes about 15 hours, the aid boat and its accompanying barge were travelling at about 3.7 knots, making a timeframe for the voyage of up to two days more likely.
The mission, mostly funded by the United Arab Emirates, is being organised by the US-based charity World Central Kitchen (WCK), while the Spanish charity Proactiva Open Arms is supplying the ship.
WCK’s founder, José Andrés, and its chief executive, Erin Gore, said: “Our goal is to establish a maritime highway of boats and barges stocked with millions of meals continuously headed towards Gaza.”
According to WCK and statements in the Israeli media on Tuesday, the Open Arms will dock at a jetty at a beach site in northern Gaza, which is being built by the charity.
WCK said it was creating the landing jetty with material from destroyed buildings and rubble. It had a further 500 tonnes of aid amassed in Cyprus, which would also be dispatched, it said.
According to Israel’s Kan radio network, work has been under way by WCK and other aid agencies – with the permission of the Israeli military – in recent days to flatten the shore with machinery and construct the platform, which would allow the aid to be unloaded and transported by truck within Gaza.
The ship set sail as the president of the European Commission, which is backing the new aid route, warned that starvation in Gaza was not acceptable. The Ursula von der Leyen in a speech to the European parliament on Tuesday, said: “The situation on the ground is more dramatic than ever, and it has reached a tipping point. We have all seen the reports of children dying of starvation. This cannot be.”
Insiders in the EU say the sailing was always going to be difficult because of Israel’s security concerns and wider issues about how the aid will be distributed.
The EU is also supporting airdrops of aid but insiders say the land corridor through Rafah is still the most important. Before the war, about 500 tonnes of aid were being sent by the EU to Gaza but this has been reduced to 100 tonnes a day since October.
Von der Leyen also announced the EU was standing up a “civil protection mechanism” usedin responses to emergencies and natural disasters.
It is understood the mechanism has been triggered by the UN and the World Food Programme but will give rise to a round-the-clock emergency response centre that operates under the auspices of the European Commission.
The centre can now issue notification to member states for specific aid required, likely to be parachutes and containers, and coordinate offers of equipment with the right to reimburse member states up to 75% of the cost of transport to Cyprus.
The inaugural voyage is considered a pilot mission. Open Arms had originally been expected to leave Larnaca on Friday, then on Sunday and then Monday. The missed deadlines were attributed to “technical reasons”. Late on Monday, Greek Cypriot media reported that delays in constructing the landing jetty for the aid were responsible.
Gaza has been sealed off from the outside world since Israel began its offensive in response to an attack on Israel by Hamas militants on 7 October.
The sailing is a separate initiative from that announced last week by the US, which plans to build a temporary pier to facilitate aid deliveries by sea. Tuesday’s mission, if successful, would in effect signal the first easing of an Israeli naval blockade imposed on Gaza in 2008 after Hamas took control of the Palestinian territory.
With the humanitarian crisis in Gaza becoming increasingly desperate, international players have been scrambling to find alternative routes to supply aid.
Cyprus said its maritime corridor offered a fast-track workaround to getting aid delivered. Cargoes are to undergo security inspections in Cyprus by a team including personnel from Israel, eliminating the need for screenings at the final offloading point to remove potential delays.