The ships of the Maersk company no longer know where to anchor in the Mediterranean. Since the ban on two ships in Spain, the Danish shipowner has trailed waves of indignation in certain ports where it anchors. On Sunday, November 17, in the port of Ambarli in Istanbul, a pro-Palestinian demonstration asked Erdogan’s AKP government to follow Madrid’s example. And a week earlier, it was in Morocco that activists were pushing for a boycott, while the ship Maersk Denver marked a stopover in the port of Tanger Med.
Tracked
Container ships, whose movements can easily be geolocated via applications like MarineTraffic or VesselFinder, are accused of having transported American military equipment to Israel. Suspicions are fueled by an investigation by the Palestinian Youth Movement into “evidence of Maersk deliveries to the Israeli army” from September 2023 to September 2024.
The cargoes included, according to this document, engines, parts of armored vehicles, aircraft or firing systems. It is on this basis that part of the Maersk fleet is singled out, despite communications from the company, which denies today accommodating such a load in the incriminated vessels.
Maersk asks Spain for clarification of its position. For the Danish shipowner, Spain seems to have “modified its criteria on a discretionary basis and now refuses ships carrying anything military-related to or from Israel, even if that cargo is legal.”
The affair took a political turn in Madrid, where the socialist government is spearheading the creation of a Palestinian state. “Our complaints aim to prevent weapons from reaching Israel via Spanish ports,” recalled Wednesday, November 19, the left-wing deputy (Sumar) Enrique Santiago, partner of the ruling majority, on the social network “provide legal evidence” of “genocide” in Gaza.
Operating mode
Moroccan and Turkish activists follow the same method of questioning the authorities, while the Maersk Denver, refused at the port of Algeciras near Gibraltar, was forced to divert to that of Tangier. Protests by the local branch of the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement in Tangier prompted the opposition Justice and Development Party (PJD) to demand an investigation to determine the nature of the shipment of Maersk Denver.
Last Sunday in Istanbul, it was an organization following the same objectives, the Action Committee for Palestine, which in turn took out flags and banners to boycott the ships of Maersk, but also of the Israeli company ZIM, denouncing a government which “opens its jurisdiction and territorial waters”.
On November 3, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan announced his initiative to send a joint letter from 52 countries – including Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Algeria, China, Iran and the Russia – to ask the UN Security Council to stop the supply of weapons to Israel. The Action Committee for Palestine highlights that the shipowner ZIM expects 124 ships to pass through Turkish ports in the next three months.
