Natasha Lennard
The Intercept / December 17 2024
As the diplomatic row over the embargo escalates, the U.S. sent Israel millions of pounds of ammunition through Spanish territory.
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 spiralling international row between the two allies, both members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. (Sealift did not respond to a request 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.
In a statement, Pentagon spokesperson Tom Crosson outlined the various U.S. government uses of the Sealift-owned ship, including the transport of ammunition and its delivery of 20 million pounds of humanitarian aid to Gaza over three months in 2024.
“The U.S. government coordinates with Allies and partners throughout the transportation process and adheres to requirements globally,” Crosson said. “The United States military, when directed, has a responsibility and capacity to deliver both humanitarian aid to those in need and munitions to support the defense of our Allies and partners.”
‘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 armoured vehicles, from commercial American ports to Israel for use in the ongoing genocidal war on Gaza. A number of those shipments, which stopped in Spain, violated Spanish policy that blocked ships carrying Israeli war materiel from docking at its ports.
Following reporting in The Intercept and Spanish newspaper El Diario, Spain in recent weeks blocked two vessels from docking, forcing Maersk to reroute some of its transatlantic shipping of government and military cargo from the U.S. through Morocco. (Maersk did not respond to a question about the shipments routed through Morocco.)
Spanish officials put the embargo in place last May to end Spanish involvement in arms sales to Israel. Since then, Spain has prevented more than five vessels from docking at its ports under the policy.
“We call on the European and North African nations of conscience to deny docking or refuelling to all vessels carrying ammunition or military cargo to Israel,” said Aisha Nizar a campaign organizer with the Palestinian Youth Movement. “And we specifically call on the government of Spain to continue to implement the decision it made in May 2024.”
Spain’s United Left political coalition last week proposed a new protocol in the Spanish Parliament, which, if passed, would allow ships carrying military cargo to stop in Spain, but would instruct Spanish authorities to inspect the vessels and seize any Israel-bound military equipment. According to the proposed protocol, Spain would then report the ships to the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court — where Israel is facing allegations of genocide and other war crimes — as well as to the Spanish judicial system.
In response to Spain denying entry to ships, the U.S. opened an investigation in early December into whether Spain’s denials of entry to the vessels constitute a violation of maritime trade regulations. The Federal Maritime Commission, an independent body that monitors conditions that may affect shipping and U.S. international trade, said it is “concerned that this apparent policy of denying entry to certain vessels will create conditions unfavourable to shipping in the foreign trade, whether in a particular route or in commerce generally.”
“Should this happen, an unending legal battle would begin.”
If the investigation finds Spain to be in breach of the regulations, the U.S. could fine the Spanish government up to $2.3 million per voyage. In effect, the U.S.is threatening a NATO ally for upholding its own policies and attempting to comply with international humanitarian law.
“A fine imposed by the United States against a country that is abiding by its obligations to prevent a genocide is clearly an illegal and illegitimate sanction in view of international law,” said Santiago, the Spanish politician. “Should this happen, an unending legal battle would begin.”
“Moreover,” he said, “we would work for Spain to take measures to sanction all American citizens that may have taken part in this attack against international law and against Spain.”
A million pounds of ammunition
In their latest report, researchers from the Palestinian-led diaspora group Palestinian Youth Movement and the left-wing umbrella coalition Progressive International traced the journey of the container ship MV Sagamore. Based on reviews of U.S. military contracts, satellite imagery, and changes in cargo weight throughout MV Sagamore’s voyages, the researchers found that the vessel has in the last year completed numerous missions carrying ammunition and other materiel to Israel from the U.S. Military Ocean Terminal Sunny Point, or MOTSU, in North Carolina.
According to the report, the MV Sagamore transferred over 1 million pounds of ammunition and military cargo to Israel in just one of its shipments. The ship is owned by Sealift Inc. and chartered on behalf of the U.S. Navy’s Military Sealift Command.
Used for the transport of live ammunition and explosives, MOTSU is the largest military terminal in the U.S. The U.S. military’s Transportation Command website notes that the port is used for sending and receiving “military equipment like rockets, missiles, howitzers, grenades, projectiles, pyrotechnics and more” — hazardous materials that cannot be handled at commercial ports. Researchers found that the Sagamore has made six calls to MOTSU in the last year; the last journey out of MOTSU that the ship made was to Israel’s Ashdod Port.
While the military-contracted missions do not make the details of their ships’ cargo publicly available, using an array of evidence, the researchers wrote that they can conclude with “a very high degree of certainty, that … [is the] vessel that delivered over a thousand tonnes of Class 1 explosive ammunition to Israel this winter as it currently conducts its war against Gaza.”
Researchers with the Palestinian Youth Movement said that the MV Sagamore was also used for the U.S. military’s floating pier in Gaza to deliver aid to Gaza between May and July 2024. The pier was the Biden administration’s ill-conceived and costly gesture for delivering humanitarian aid to the bombarded Strip, as Israel blocked aid by land. The temporary dock cost $230 million and delivered about a day’s worth of aid to Palestinians in Gaza.
The pier was dismantled after 20 days in use, following damage due to bad weather. Video evidence also appeared to show that the pier, intended for delivering aid, was used by the U.S. military to assist Israeli soldiers in the June Nuseirat refugee camp massacre, in which the Israeli military killed over 275 Palestinians, including dozens of children, and extracted four Israeli hostages. (The U.S. denied that the pier was used for the operation.)
To deliver aid through the temporary pier, the MV Sagamore picked up food aid in Cyprus and delivered it to the Port of Ashdod; the goods were then transported by truck to the floating dock. Researchers found that, while the vessel was contracted to deliver aid, it was concurrently under contract with the U.S. to deliver ammunition, though the contracts did not specify the recipients.
While the researchers could not conclude that the ship carried aid and weapons to Israel during the same voyage, the report said, “A review of the federal DoD contract data and vessel travel data complicates the publicly-stated narrative that the MV Sagamore was engaged in simple humanitarian aid transfers.”
Crosson, the Pentagon spokesperson, said the ship was not used for aid and weapons on the same journey.
“The vessel was originally in the East Mediterranean and offloaded cargo in Greece the second week of April,” Crosson said, “before leaving empty for Cypress to join the JLOTS mission” — a reference to the Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore program, the Gaza pier’s official name.
MV Sagamore’s journeys, as detailed in the report, included a voyage on which the ship loaded vast weights of materiel at the North Carolina military terminal, then stopped at a joint U.S.–Spain operated military port in Spain, before heading to Israel to unload the cargo.
Natasha Lennard is a columnist for The Intercept
