Election posters, mass tourism and property: Israel’s footprint in Cyprus

Various locations, Cyprus – This summer in Cyprus, on a road near Larnaca airport, a billboard greeted holidaymakers in Hebrew: “Israelis, enjoy! Now come back and win!”

It was an election poster in the Cypriot city for Israel’s October ۲۷ vote featuring Israel’s former army chief and leader of the opposition Yashar Party, Gadi Eisenkot.

The poster of Eisenkot, believed to be the first time a foreign politician had campaigned on billboards in Cyprus, signalled the growing number of Israelis living on and visiting the island, TV presenter and pro-Palestine activist Melanie Steliou told Al Jazeera.

“Israel is only ۴۰ minutes away by plane; they can pop over, vote, and come back within the day,” she said.

Israel does not allow most citizens living abroad to vote outside the country, so campaigns court those who can fly home on polling day.

The poster demonstrates how Israeli politicians see Cyprus as “just another district of Israel”, Steliou said.

Israeli political influence is also being felt in Cyprus’s parliament. On October ۲۰, six Cypriot lawmakers formed a pro-Israel caucus, launched by the advocacy group Israel Allies Foundation, The Jerusalem Post reported.

Cyprus has absorbed waves of foreign buyers before. Limassol was once nicknamed “Limassolgrad” for its Russian community.

Theodosis Pipis, a Cypriot historian and analyst with the think tank KEDISA, said that with Russian investment in the early ۲۰۱۰s, “you saw big buildings pop up” as companies moved over but “you never really saw a huge influx of buying houses, building schools, creating communities.”

Waves of foreign money before had not shaped the island’s political climate or brought foreign election campaigns with it, he said. Israeli investment, by contrast, is creating “a sense of community for the future”, he explained.

Israelis made nearly ۶۰۰,۰۰۰ trips to Cyprus last year, more than double the ۲۰۲۲ figure, according to the Cyprus Statistical Service (CYSTAT). In August, nearly one in four tourists arriving on the island was Israeli, a ۲۸.۴ percent increase from ۲۰۲۵, according to CYSTAT, with some buying homes. 

In the ۱۲ months to September ۲۰۲۵, Israelis made ۸۵۰ property purchases in Larnaca district, more than any other foreign nationality, according to Ministry of Interior data. Israel’s embassy in Nicosia estimates that ۱۵,۰۰۰ to ۲۰,۰۰۰ consider the island home, Cypriot news outlet Philenews reported in August. According to the last census in ۲۰۲۱, slightly more than ۱,۰۰۰ Israelis lived in or were registered in Cyprus.

Venetians, Ottomans and the British all held the island before independence in ۱۹۶۰. It has been divided since Turkiye’s ۱۹۷۴ invasion, which followed a coup backed by the military government in Athens.

More recently, British retirees, Russian capital and golden-passport buyers have poured money into its property market.

But the speed, scale and nature of new Israeli investments, to an island where walls are covered in pro-Palestine murals and graffiti amid the genocide in Gaza, have caught the attention of many.

Investment from Israel rose more than sixfold between ۲۰۱۷ and ۲۰۲۴, to ۵.۱ billion euros ($۵.۹bn), according to the Central Bank of Cyprus, even as total foreign investment in the country fell by a quarter between ۲۰۲۲ and ۲۰۲۴ and Russian holdings, much of it money simply routed through Cypriot holding companies, shrank by more than a third.

Nasia Hadjigeorgiou, an associate professor in transitional justice and human rights at the University of Central Lancashire in Cyprus, told Al Jazeera that British and Lebanese buying “wasn’t something that made waves” and “came almost naturally”. The Israeli push, by contrast, “was a more sudden development”.

That timing matters, Hadjigeorgiou said. Israel’s government keeps receiving “a lot of cover and a lot of support” from Nicosia at a time when Israel “is doing unspeakable things” in the Palestinian enclave, “and that makes at least a portion of the population uncomfortable.”

Island tensions

Steliou pulled out her phone and showed one video – footage of a person who had been dining at an Israeli-owned restaurant attempting to attack protesters at a pro-Palestine march in Cyprus. Then another – an Israeli man writing expletives, drawing a sexual organ and spitting on a mural honouring Gaza’s children.

Such events occur often, she said.

Amid Israel’s wars on Gaza and Lebanon, locals interviewed by Al Jazeera said the presence of Israelis who had served in the military was hard to bear.

“I feel my heart sink when I hear and see large groups of Israeli men here, knowing that they have served in the military and can commit genocide and then buy property,” Giorgos Kyrou, a ۳۲-year-old artist from Limassol, said.

Others blamed the government.

“Our politicians are compromised,” said Ioannis Nestoras, a potter who lives in Limassol. “They are willing to hug, to embrace, to treat as friends the Israeli government … I don’t think it’s representative of the Cypriot mentality.”

Outside the NYX Hotel Limassol, owned by Fattal, Israel’s largest hotel group, Steliou said Israeli investment appears centred on residential zones, including so-called “gated communities”.

Politicians, estate agents, academics and residents in Cyprus use the phrase to describe clusters of Israeli-owned properties they see as closed off from the wider community.

No official count exists, and owners’ nationalities are not recorded for purchases through Cypriot companies.

But patterns are visible. Israeli companies have bought most of the coastline between Livadia and Pyla, near Larnaca, to build homes and hotels, the Cypriot financial news site Stockwatch reported last year.

Stockwatch also reported that Israeli investors are promoting the largest organised residential development in Cyprus in Dromolaxia-Meneou, near Larnaca, with its own kindergarten, swimming pools, and private park.

Other Cypriots share Steliou’s concerns.

Kyrou said Israeli investments can focus on a particular area and that “sometimes it feels like the locals are being pushed out of those villages or urban centres”.

As a historian, Pipis said he understood fears that Israel’s occupation of Palestine could be repeated, though he did not expect that in Cyprus. Instead, he believes a foothold in a friendly EU member state “offers a certain safety if things escalate more in the Middle East”.

“You don’t buy these amounts of land preparing to create communities with schools … if you’re not planning to stay there for the long term,” he said.

In Polemidia, on the edge of Limassol, the Yael Foundation is funding a “flagship Jewish school” for up to ۱,۵۰۰ pupils, due to open in ۲۰۲۷. Cyprus has many private and international schools serving foreign communities.

Rabbi Yehoshua Smukler, who leads the project, has described this one as a “Zionist school”.

Critics also point to a pattern of building first and seeking permission later.

In February ۲۰۲۵, Cyprus’s Ministry of Education said that no application had been submitted for the school, and as late as October that year, the Ministry of Finance said the application was still being finalised, the Cypriot daily Kathimerini reported. Polemidia’s municipality, which complained it was not consulted, had itself been refused permission to build a sport centre on the same plot, the newspaper said.

The ministry did not respond to Al Jazeera’s questions.

In addition to schools, other infrastructure catering to Israelis has popped up.

Hadassah, one of the biggest hospital groups in Israel, owned by the US group “Hadassah, The Women’s Zionist Organization of America”, opened its first European medical centre in Limassol in July.

“Specific areas are being bought en masse”, Stefanos Stefanou, leader of the left-wing Cypriot AKEL Party, said in June ۲۰۲۵. Purchases in Larnaca and Limassol were creating gated communities “almost inaccessible to anyone other than Israeli nationals”, he said, adding that Israel is preparing a “backyard” in Cyprus.

“We do not say this because of xenophobia or anti-Semitism,” he later said.

Israel’s former Ambassador to Cyprus Oren Anolik hit back, saying Stefanou’s comments sought to “single out the Jewish community in Cyprus”.

Hadjigeorgiou said there was likely “some exaggeration in relation to some of the examples” of closed-off areas, but that some were “very clearly gated communities”.

Speaking as a lawyer, she said Cyprus’s constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights prohibit discrimination on grounds including ethnicity, nationality and religion and that a development where only Israelis can buy “is unconstitutional”.

In western Cyprus, Uriel Kertesz, a businessman with Hungarian and Israeli citizenship, bought an estimated ۷۰ to ۸۰ percent of the abandoned village of Trozena and its surrounding farmland, which lies in a protected area. Yiannis Pazouros, a journalist at the Cypriot daily Politis who investigated the purchases and met Kertesz, said buying as an EU citizen freed him from limits on non-EU buyers.

Kertesz paid double or triple the market value and pushed ahead without the permits needed in a protected area, Pazouros said. Al Jazeera cannot independently confirm this.

Despite public fears that the village could be closed off, Kertesz has stayed tight-lipped about his plans, he added.

Criticism of Israel is far from uncommon in Cyprus, particularly in light of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

Recently, on an October evening, Mike Kroll, an Israeli-American comedian based in Tel Aviv, played at a comedy festival in Limassol.

It initially caused “apprehension” because of Israel’s image, he said.

He felt “fine” with people criticising Israel because he was treated with respect and had engaged in “deep discussions”.

However, his reaction has not been not universal.

Across Cyprus, pro-Palestinian slogans turn public spaces into expressions of solidarity. Some are more direct in their meaning: “Zionists not welcome” reads graffiti in Larnaca.

In August ۲۰۲۵, after Israel’s Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli complained to Cypriot ministers, the Interior Ministry ordered municipalities to remove what it called hate-inciting graffiti.

In Limassol, crews removed it with uncharacteristic efficiency, sometimes before ۶am, Nestoras said. The mayor initially tried to protect it as political expression but was overruled, fuelling suspicion the order came from “higher-ups”.

The Interior Ministry did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

For Cypriots, Hadjigeorgiou said, the changes carry particular weight.

“We are a population that has been displaced from our homes in what the government loudly and clearly describes as ethnic cleansing. And at the same time, we are allowing another group to do the same thing in the areas that the Republic of Cyprus controls.”