MEP Fidias Panayiotou has called for a ban on third countries from conducting election campaigns in Cyprus after a billboard promoting Israeli prime ministerial candidate and former IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot was put up in Larnaca. Eisenkot is leader of Israel’s Yashar party and a candidate for prime minister in Israel’s October 27 elections.

One sign reads ‘Israelis, enjoy! You deserve it,’ while a second, on the return route to the airport, urges travellers to ‘Come back and win!’ It is aimed at “reaching the significant number of Israelis holidaying in Cyprus”. No doubt it is also targeting Israelis who live on the island, whose number has been estimated by some media to be in the region of 15,000 to 20,000.

Irrespective, it has caused a storm on social media and prompted Panayiotou to call for an outright ban on political advertising from third countries. Of course, there is no framework or law already in place governing this issue, and it’s unprecedented. The interior ministry said that as the billboard paid by a foreign party does not concern Cypriot elections, it has no jurisdiction.

In 2017 in Germany, then foreign minister Sigmar Gabriel nixed a proposal by Turkey to let pro-Erdogan politicians address campaign rallies in the country.

Gabriel suggested it was “not a good idea”, which angered Tayyip Erdogan to the point of accusing Germany of “Nazi-style” behaviour. “Now they have a foreign minister who does not know his limits. Who are you to talk to the President of Turkey?… He is trying to give us a lesson.” Such campaign rallies have since been banned. On the issue of billboards, German municipalities have discretion on a case-by-case basis.

Gabriel’s reasoning was not due to unfounded concerns. “Ours is an open country, but we have no intention of bringing other countries’ internal political conflicts into our population,” he said at the time.

While on the face of it, one billboard in Cyprus paid for by an Israeli election candidate might seem innocuous enough to some and no laws have been broken, whether it’s “a good idea” as the former German minister said, is a valid question.

Will we start to see rival billboards with Benjamin Netanyahu’s face? How long before such billboards, especially Israeli ones in the current climate, would end up vandalised or defaced and leave Cyprus exposed to accusations of anti-semitism?

Setting aside the fact that had it been a Greek election billboard there would probably not have been a great fuss, it’s difficult to gauge whether people are aggrieved only because it involves Israel. Certainly some considered the written message on the billboard to be tone deaf amid a conflict in which thousands of people have died. Whether the outraged internet see it as a wider issue concerning all third countries is difficult to determine.

Apart from Panayiotou, those in the corridors of power have remained largely silent about the billboard. Perhaps they don’t want to upset Israel or perhaps they themselves could be accused in turn of actively campaigning to the Cypriot diaspora in third countries for decades during our own elections.