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 27 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 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 20, 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 2010s, “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 600,000 trips to Cyprus last year, more than double the 2022 figure, according to the Cyprus Statistical Service (CYSTAT).
In August, nearly one in four tourists arriving on the island was Israeli, a 28.4 percent increase from 2025, according to CYSTAT, with some buying homes. In the 12 months to September 2025, Israelis made 850 property purchases in Larnaca district, more than any other foreign nationality, according to Ministry of Interior data. Israel’s embassy in Nicosia estimates that 15,000 to 20,000 consider the island home, Cypriot news outlet Philenews reported in August.
According to the last census in 2021, slightly more than 1,000 Israelis lived in or were registered in Cyprus. Venetians, Ottomans and the British all held the island before independence in 1960. It has been divided since Turkiye’s 1974 invasion, which followed a coup backed by the military government in Athens.
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