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Cyprus Thought It Was “Just Israeli Investment” – Until it Wasn't

 
Cyprus was warned. They said it couldn’t happen here. Then an Israeli developer was sentenced to five years — for doing exactly what they denied.

Right, so they said it was overthinking. They said Cypriots were being dramatic. They said that concerns about Israeli land buying on the island, in light of the land and property seizures observed in Palestine were paranoid nonsense, it couldn’t happen here and that anyone raising the alarm about such things just didn’t understand how investment works and might perhaps just be an antisemite. 
 
And then a Cypriot court sentenced an Israeli businessman to five years in prison for developing property in the Turkish-controlled north that still legally belonged to Greek Cypriots displaced in 1974. An Israeli stealing land for development in Cyprus then is it? 
 
Suddenly the hysteria didn’t look so hysterical. Suddenly the warnings didn’t look so wild. The thing people were told could never happen had already happened — and it took a criminal prosecution to force everyone to say it out loud. An Israeli has been caught doing in Cyprus what they’ve done for years in Palestine. So how come they can be prosecuted for it in one state, but not the other then? 

Right, so an Israeli caught involved in selling land that didn’t belong to them, happening in Cyprus, where warnings about the scale of Israeli purchases on the island have been warned about and ignored. Well the break came in a courtroom in the end. Not in a policy paper, not in a parliamentary debate, but in the one place where the state has to stop pretending it didn’t know what’s going on. 
 
A Cypriot judge sentenced Israeli businessman Shimon Aykut to five years in prison for developing land in the Turkish-controlled north of Cyprus that is still legally owned by Greek Cypriots displaced in 1974. He pleaded guilty to forty charges related to unlawful development and sale of property that did not belong to him. His defence said he was acting as support for his son, who oversaw the companies involved, and that his health should be considered. The court recognised a crime of continuation though: displacement did not end in 1974; it continues wherever the ownership of that land is overridden. A prison sentence made that plain.
 
This was the moment the old assumption stopped working. For years, Cypriots raising concerns about the scale and nature of Israeli property purchases on the island were dismissed. They were told it was paranoia, exaggeration, or nationalist panic. 

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