Reuters and several other news agencies have picked up on a report that a shipload of rockets and artillery rounds, destined for Syria, has been intercepted. US warships intercepted the boat, but lacking the authority to search it or seize its cargo, allowed it to continue on the Cyrpus, where the ship was flagged. Cypriot authorities are now carrying on an investigation.
Quoting a European Union diplomatic source, it said Cyprus had acted after Israel and the United States requested that the Cypriot-flagged vessel be stopped.
Authorities contacted the ship and demanded that it dock in Limassol for inspection. Customs officials had unloaded part of the cargo and a large amount of weaponry, including artillery rounds and rockets, the paper said.
Cypriot authorities declined comment.
Reuters
Ha'aretz reports that...
A search of the ship, which was sailing from Iran to the Syrian port of Latakia, found ammunition for T-72 tanks, used by the Syrian army, as well as various types of mortar shells, said a senior Israeli official. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni called her Cypriot counterpart, Markos Kyprianou, yesterday and asked him to act to impound the weapons found on the ship. She said allowing the delivery of the weapons would violate UN Security Council Resolution 1747, which bans Iran from selling arms due to sanctions imposed following its breach of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
Meanwhile, Cyprus's President, Dimitris Christofias backed away from his unqualified assertion that the ship violated UN resolutions, asking instead for "patience" as Cypriot authorities search the ship. American authorities are somewhat less equivocal, as "[s]uspicions that the Cypriot-flagged container ship Monchegorsk was ferrying arms from Iran to the militant Palestinian organization Hamas had been raised by the United States."
Adding to the curiosity of the situation is Hamas's apparent ambivalence on a peace agreement.
"The resistance is against a permanent ceasefire," said Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal. However, today al-Arabiya reports that "Hamas has accepted an Egyptian plan to establish a long-term truce with Israel."
With Jerusalem promising harsh reprisals for the latest round of rocket attacks out of Gaza, any potential truce would be on shaky ground. Israel has stated that its conditions for a truce are an end to the rocket fire and an end to the smuggling tunnels. The rockets have not yet abated, but the smuggling might:
Egypt is installing tunnel detection equipment brought from the United States along with advanced cameras and motion sensors in a move to stop smuggling at the Egypt-Gaza border.
If there is a stop to the weapons smuggling, there would presumably be an eventual stop to the rocket fire. The ball then would be in Jerusalem's court to see if a long term peace can be established.