The U.S. Department of Defense sent over a thousand tons of ammunition to Israel on a ship that stopped at a U.S. naval base in Spain — a violation of Spain’s embargo on ships carrying military cargo bound for Israel, according to researchers from the Palestinian Youth Movement and Progressive International.
The ship, owned by Sealift Inc., was also used for delivering aid to Gaza last spring, when the U.S. carried out its disastrous and short-lived floating pier aid mission.
While partly operated by the U.S. Navy, Naval Station Rota is Spanish territory technically beholden to Spanish law. Moving ammunition bound for Israel through a U.S. Navy base on Spanish soil makes enforcement of the embargo trickier.
“Shipments through American military bases in Spain of military materials are harder to detect.”“Shipments through American military bases in Spain of military materials, which may be used in the commission of international crimes, are harder to detect,” Enrique Santiago, a lawyer and Spanish legislator whose party is in the government coalition, told The Intercept. He said that, though Spanish oversight should apply, “in practice, American bases are beyond the reach of Spanish sovereignty.”
Santiago added, “If shipments of military material used in international crimes are made through American bases in Spain, and this fact can be evidenced, the people taking part in them would equally have criminal liability.”
The revelation that deadly ammunition is being shipped by the U.S. to Israel through Spanish ports is the latest chapter of a spiraling international row between the two allies, both members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. (Neither Sealift nor the U.S. military responded to requests for comment.)
The U.S. recently lodged a case with the Federal Maritime Commission, an independent U.S. government agency that regulates international shipping and can levy astronomical fines — potentially hitting Spain with costs that run well into the millions.
“Unending Legal Battle”
Last month, The Intercept reported that Maersk, one of the world’s largest shippers, is among the companies that delivered millions of pounds of materiel, including armored vehicles, from commercial American ports to Israel for use in the ongoing genocidal war on Gaza. A number of those shipments, which stopped in........