Thursday, December 25th 2025
Analysts are sounding alarm bells about Greece’s policy to seek closer ties with Israel, including its participation in a tripartite summit held Monday in Israel.
On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and the head of the Greek Cypriot administration, Nikos Christodoulides, met for a tripartite summit in West Jerusalem. The meeting highlighted defense cooperation as Netanyahu, increasingly isolated on the international stage, was widely seen as seeking closer ties with Mitsotakis.
Some analysts say Mitsotakis will be judged harshly by history on the meeting with Netanyahu while others argue he failed a moral and legal test by calling Israel a “democratic state”.
In April this year, Mitsotakis visited Netanyahu, becoming the first European leader to meet him in Israel since the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for his alleged war crimes in Gaza.
Heidi Matthews, faculty member at York University’s Osgoode Hall School of Law; Neve Gordon, an Israeli professor at Queen Mary University of London, and Gentian Zyberi, an international law and human rights expert at the Norwegian Center for Human Rights at the University of Oslo, spoke to Anadolu about the leaders’ controversial meeting this week.
Heidi Matthews said Mitsotakis’ participation in the joint summit with Israel and the Greek Cypriot administration signaled that Athens is ready to pursue its regional political interests “in at the expense of compliance with international law”.
She said Greece already has a “history of complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza”, particularly by facilitating the shipment of military cargo and dual-use materials through Greek territorial waters and ports.
Matthews described how Greek lawyers formally challenged the government this week over the planned use of Heraklion port by a ship called the “Ocean Gladiator”, alleging violations of the trade treaty. weapons. She said the ship was carrying more than 1,600 tons of US-made munitions destined for Israel, describing it as “one of the largest such shipments since October 7, 2023,” the day Israel’s genocidal war began.
According to Matthews, the legal challenge appears to have resulted in the ship changing its intended route. She added that Greece’s participation in the summit appears to have been encouraged by UN Security Council Resolution 2803, which supports US President Donald Trump’s 20-point Gaza peace plan.
Matthews said both the plan and the resolution have been widely criticized for violating fundamental principles of international law, including “the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to self-determination”.
“Despite the so-called ceasefire, Israel’s genocide in Gaza continues,” Matthews said, adding that Resolution 2803 “has not changed the legal obligations of all states regarding Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine”.
Referring to decisions issued by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 2024 and later, Matthews said the court had made it clear that states the third were legally bound not to take action that recognizes the illegal situation created by Israel’s continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territories, including Gaza.
In this context, she said that Greece’s agreement to deepen cooperation with Israel in security, defense and military matters, including maritime security, would violate its international legal obligations towards Palestine.
– Warnings for cooperation and obligations to ICJ
“Prime Minister Mitsotakis is contributing to the dismantling of the post-World War II legal order by visiting Prime Minister Netanyahu,” said Gordon, the Israeli-born scholar.
He stressed that Netanyahu is wanted by the ICJ and added that world leaders should seek his arrest instead of honoring him.
“Thus, Mitsotakis is complicit in the violation of international law,” he added. he.
– Expectations from international law experts
Zyberi said that there is an expectation for heads of state or government who plan to visit Israel. “The only comment I have on such visits by the heads of government of any country is that they demand that Israel fulfill its obligations under international law,” Zyberi said.
He said these obligations include respecting the ceasefire reached in October, allowing the delivery of sufficient humanitarian aid, including medicine and tents, stopping illegal settlements and ending the illegal occupation, as requested by the General Assembly of UN last year.
Source: prizrenpost
Etiketa: Brief
