Britain Has Been Spying On Gaza—And It Exploits Its Occupation Of Cyprus To Do It

By Tiernan Cannon | April 28, 2025 | 10:43am

An RAF jet lands at SBA Akrotiri in Cyprus in 2014, via Cpl Neil Bryden RAF/Wikimedia Commons

International Affairs United Kingdom

Britain Has Been Spying On Gaza—And It Exploits Its Occupation Of Cyprus To Do It

Britain today claims three percent of Cyprus as its sovereign territory, and it is from this land that it launches flights to spy on Gaza. We spoke with Nuvpreet Kalra, who coordinates a campaign opposing these actions, to find out more.

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The British government, like that of the United States and plenty of other Western countries, is complicit in the genocide in Gaza. From the first day of the atrocities to the present, the U.K., initially under Conservative Party rule, and now under Labour, has provided diplomatic cover and weapons sales to Israel, while maintaining trade relations and frequently parroting its propaganda. The country’s mainstream media, through its pathetic, one-sided coverage of the war, is utterly discredited, while the police have cracked down hard on Palestine’s supporters on the streets. Much of this is widely understood now, but, what remains largely undiscussed is that Britain has been actively spying on Gaza throughout the course of the genocide.

According to an investigation by the NGO Action on Armed Violence and the independent media outlet Declassified UK, the Royal Air Force (RAF) launched more than 500 surveillance flights around Gaza between December 2023 and March 2025, when their report was published. What specific information is gathered during these flights is unclear, given the secretive nature of them, but it certainly raises questions about whether or not the U.K. is providing Israel with information to aid in its war on Gaza—a war that the U.N. Special Committee believes bears the characteristics of genocide.

The fact that the U.K., in addition to supplying weapons and diplomatic cover to Israel, is also spying on Gaza should be a scandal in its own right—the fact it isn’t just demonstrates how degraded principles of international law and human decency have become in the West. But, beyond the immediate concerns about what is happening in Gaza, this story alerts us to a wider issue of British foreign policy. These spy flights don’t set off from the United Kingdom itself, but, rather, from somewhere much closer to Gaza: the little, eastern Mediterranean island of Cyprus.

Cyprus is a divided nation of roughly 1.4 million people, split, broadly, between a Greek Cypriot majority in the south and a Turkish Cypriot minority in the north. Turkey is widely considered to be an occupying force in the north, following an invasion it undertook in 1974, but it is not, in fact, the only foreign entity that lays claim to parts of the island. Britain, too, occupies Cyprus, with its land accounting for about three percent of the island’s total area. That is not insignificant, and ordinary Cypriots live within those boundaries.

The history of Cyprus is complicated and littered with violence, and, as with so many of the world’s modern conflicts, many of its problems can be traced back to the disastrous criminality of British imperialism. The British empire, in 1878, inherited Cyprus from the Ottomans, who, themselves, had conquered the island several centuries before. Before the Ottomans’ arrival, the island had been predominantly home to ethnic Greeks, but, over the years under Ottoman rule, a substantial Turkish minority came to call the place home. The Greek Cypriots and the Turkish Cypriots tended to live in separate communities, but, generally speaking, are said to have shared the island peacefully, until, ultimately, the British got involved.

The Ottomans, in recognition of Britain’s support in their conflict against the Russian empire, handed the British administrative control over Cyprus in 1878, meaning that, from that point until 1914, Cyprus was deemed to be a British protectorate. But with the onset of World War I, when Britain and the Ottoman empire found themselves on warring sides, the British annexed Cyprus outright, occupying it until 1925, when, finally, it was absorbed as a colony. As tends to happen, opposition to British colonial rule eventually began to simmer on the island, but it ultimately found expression, mainly, through two different, and opposing, struggles. The first was “enosis,” a project pursued by the Greek Cypriot majority to unify Cyprus with Greece, while the second was “taksim,” a Turkish Cypriot drive to divide the island, whereby Turkey would gain control of the northern portion.

Britain, mindful of Cyprus’ strategic importance—it sits, basically, at the crossroads between Europe, Africa, and Asia—didn’t wish to lose control to either enosis or taksim, regardless of whatever Cypriots on the ground thought. It was, as British Prime Minister Anthony Eden publicly made clear, too important a node in the empire. “No Cyprus,” he pondered aloud in 1956, “no certain facilities to protect our supply of oil. No oil, unemployment and hunger in Britain. It is as simple as that.”

Tensions on the island, eventually, became so intolerable that talks were held between all sides, and the prospect of an independent Cyprus—neither enosis, taksim nor outright British colonialism—emerged as a possible compromise to the deadlock. Agreements were drawn up, whereby Cyprus would be granted independence and power on the island would be shared between the Greek and Turkish populations, while the British, crucially, would retain control over two military zones in the east and south of the island. These were Akrotiri and Dhekelia, the so-called Sovereign Base Areas (SBAs), which, to this day, are considered British sovereign territory.

Britain, Greece and Turkey were declared guarantors of the new Cypriot state, which granted each the right to invade, should the new constitutional order break down, and, in 1960, the Republic of Cyprus was declared. The new state, given the complicated balance of powers, was unstable, and it didn’t take long before the power-sharing agreement between the Greek and Turkish populations began to break down. Things came to a head in 1974, when the Cypriot National Guard, supported by the military junta which had taken power in Greece in 1967, attempted to seize control of the whole island. This triggered Turkey to invade, which, as a guarantor, it was entitled to do, but, once order was restored, Turkish soldiers never withdrew from the island as they should have. They continue to occupy northern Cyprus today, which is widely considered to be illegal, while Britain, quietly, continues to occupy its three percent.

Britain’s Sovereign Base Areas on Cyprus have, over the years, played their part in some major military operations. They have supported Western assaults on Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen, all of which have been horribly damaged by Western interventions, and most of which have allegedly experienced war crimes committed by American and British forces or their allies. And now, thanks to the reports appearing on Declassified UK, we know these SBAs have been supporting spying operations on Gaza.

At least 518 surveillance flights were, according to the investigation, launched by the RAF around Gaza between December 2023 and the end of March 2025. Their exact purpose is unclear, conducted, as they have been, within an atmosphere of extreme secrecy, but the British government insists they’re solely intended to aid in the recovery of hostages held by Hamas. That is a rather dubious claim, however, as there have been multiple occasions, as Declassified and Action on Armed Violence have documented, when these RAF flights took place before the launch of significant Israeli operations in which many civilians were, ultimately, killed.

Nuvpreet Kalra is an organizer for the anti-war group Code Pink, and she is responsible for coordinating the Bases Off Cyprus campaign, which seeks to end Britain’s military occupation of Cyprus. “Israel would explain this entire genocide as a hostage rescue operation, and Britain then will parrot that language,” she said, dismissing the claim that the RAF flights are launched purely for the purposes of rescuing hostages. “We can put two and two together and see that Britain is using the exact same excuses that is Israel is using to commit its genocide, which has already killed over 50,000 people. Even if we take it at face value, how many hostages are British nationals? Can we really say that 500 surveillance flights collecting thousands of hours of footage over Gaza is [appropriate]?

“If Britain wants to be serious about this hostage rescue, then it should hand over this surveillance data to the International Criminal Court. And if they’re not able to do that, there needs to be some serious questions about [whether or not] it is aiding and abetting in war crimes? If Britain feels so secure that it’s only for hostage rescue and for supporting its ally Israel, why will it refuse to hand over this information?”

In December last year, the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, visited RAF Akrotiri, one of the two main British bases on Cyprus, in what was reportedly the first official visit by a British prime minister to the island in 53 years. There, he addressed British troops, saying, “The whole world and everyone back at home is relying on you… Quite a bit of what goes on here can’t necessarily be talked about all of the time. We can’t necessarily tell the world what you’re doing.”

Why is it, exactly, that he can’t tell the world what British forces are doing in Cyprus? Why are they there at all? Britain is no longer the great power it once was, and today, under Starmer, it is reintroducing austerity at home, cutting the benefits of, among others, the disabled community throughout the U.K. How is it justifiable, then, to maintain this distant military network when it can barely support people at home? Why does it do this? The answer is not, as Starmer might try to frame it, because it serves the country’s national interest.

“I think we should see this through the lens of the Anglo-American empire,” Kalra suggested. “Britain is, really, part of the U.S. imperialist project. When we identify these bases [in Cyprus], it unravels a lot about the nature of this relationship. Britain is completely subservient to U.S. interests and is very happy to enact a lot of the violence that means U.S. imperialism can exist. If they really want to, they could stop a lot of the violence from happening. There are different choices that this government can make. The fact that they don’t tells us all we need to know.”

It is not known how many U.S. personnel are actually based in Britain’s SBAs on Cyprus, but the U.S. Department of Defense’s claim that there are only 14 is, likely, far off the mark. The real figure is likely much higher, according to Declassified, which reports that, in 2018, there were 87 U.S. airmen deployed to RAF Akrotiri, with plans in place to significantly increase numbers over the following six years. The aim, apparently, was to station 129 airmen there.

The U.S. benefits enormously from Britain’s bases on Cyprus, and it does so relatively quietly, given that, if any attention is paid to what happens on those facilities, it is, ultimately, in Britain’s name. But, while the U.S. is clearly a major part of this story, that does not absolve the British government from its actions. It is, ultimately, a decision to allow these bases to be used this way.

“Britain has for too long gotten away with all of its interventions, as though it’s secondary to the U.S.,” Kalra said. “But, actually, it has its own specific role to play. We wanted to uncover that. So we launched this as an international campaign with groups in Cyprus, Britain, and in the U.S. as a way to highlight that none of this genocide could be possible without the connections between these countries. Cyprus has its own complicity, as well. It’s allowing a lot of these flights to land at its own bases, too.”

The Bases Off Cyprus campaign, in the immediate sense, hopes to see the dismantling of the British bases on Cyprus and the transfer of the British-controlled land to the Republic of Cyprus itself. It wants to the U.K. to hand over the information it has gathered above Gaza to the ICC, and it wants to end British support for, and participation in, the genocide. And, in a broader sense, the campaign is about challenging Anglo-American imperialism and the rabid militarism that accompanies it.

“This commitment to militarism,” says Kalra, “means absolute horrors for people in Britain, when they are struggling so much day in, day out. But [the British government] doesn’t see any issue with spending more—billions more—on weapons. There’s no reason for people to be suffering. No reason for disability benefits to be cut.

“Britain is absolutely addicted to militarism. It is really, really harming us all. Even though they say it’s the most necessary thing, it’s really our demise.”