Let us begin with some reassurance for our friends, and above all our enemies, who lose sleep over antisemitism, global or Cypriot: what follows is not driven by anything of the sort. They need not worry. We do not want the world’s Jews to disappear, we have no problem with Judaism, and we do not regard them as an inferior race. If it reassures them further, we do not even consider racism worth discussing as a worldview.
Now to more serious matters. Prompted by the discussion in the House Finance Committee about the synagogue in Larnaca, we return once again to the situation at the Israeli embassy in Nicosia. The two cases are much alike. Shortly after 7 October 2023 and the Hamas attack, security measures around both buildings ballooned to absurd proportions, and it is the citizens of the Republic of Cyprus who are paying the price.
According to AKEL parliament member Andreas Pasiourtides, who raised the issue during the debate on the Justice Ministry’s budget, security around the Larnaca synagogue is wearing down the local community and stifling economic activity in the area. An entire block, he said, has been sealed off for three years, with the restrictions driving businesses into decline and making daily life unbearable for residents.
The Justice and Public Order Minister’s answer was that he had not been briefed, and he undertook to respond in writing. The embassy did not come up, but Mr Fytiris may well be in the dark about the situation there too.
So let us spell it out again. Residents have struggled to get through for years, even before 7 October 2023. Since then, however, police have closed off access from Grivas Digenis Avenue into Emmanouil Roidi Street, and the only way to get home is to go round the block and drive right past the embassy entrance. Odd that this is considered safer, but never mind. On the one road left open, huge concrete blocks have been placed so that two vehicles cannot pass each other in front of the embassy, on Spyridon Vasi and Ioannis Gryparis streets. A police officer once told us the blocks were there to repel a tank or a suicide attack. Ioannis Gryparis Street, for its part, has been a dead end for decades.
As if these brainwaves about cutting off roads were not enough, the embassy’s own security staff make things even more unbearable. In plain clothes and without any identification, they barge, if you’ll pardon the expression, into apartment blocks and the yards of private homes, presumably hunting for explosives or terrorists. To our simple minds, this is illegal, and we wonder who gave them permission to violate the sanctity of people’s homes.
Let the Justice Minister, or indeed the parliament members who know about the synagogue but not the embassy, drop by one morning. Let them see the sorry state of a neighbourhood held hostage by a foreign state, and the many police officers who do its bidding, take its orders and put an embassy above the citizens of the Republic of Cyprus. Is this, too, the price of the alliance with Israel? Will this state respect its own citizens, or must they remove the police barriers themselves?
