LIMASSOL, Cyprus (AP) — A ship that set off from Cyprus loaded with 1,200 tons of food supplies for the Gaza Strip approached the Israeli port of Ashdod on Tuesday in a renewed effort to alleviate the worsening crisis in the Palestinian territory, where food security experts say the “worst-case scenario of famine” is unfolding.
The Panamanian-flagged vessel HENKE is loaded with 52 containers carrying food aid such as pasta, rice, baby food and canned goods. Israeli customs officials had screened the aid at the Cypriot port of Limassol, from where the ship departed on Monday.
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Jalal Uddin, electrical and technology officer aboard a Panamanian-flagged ship watches as containers filled with humanitarian aid for the people of Gaza are being loaded aboard the vessel at Cyprus' main port in Limassol, on Monday, Aug. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)
Containers loaded with humanitarian aid for the people of Gaza, including flour, pasta, baby food and canned goods, is being loaded aboard a Panamanian-flagged ship at Cyprus' main port in Limassol, on Monday, Aug. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)
Containers loaded with humanitarian aid for the people of Gaza, including flour, pasta, baby food and canned goods, is being loaded aboard a Panamanian-flagged ship at Cyprus' main port in Limassol, on Monday, Aug. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)
Containers loaded with humanitarian aid for the people of Gaza, including flour, pasta, baby food and canned goods, is being loaded aboard a Panamanian-flagged ship at Cyprus' main port in Limassol, on Monday, Aug. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)
Jalal Uddin, electrical and technology officer aboard a Panamanian-flagged ship watches as containers filled with humanitarian aid for the people of Gaza are being loaded aboard the vessel at Cyprus' main port in Limassol, on Monday, Aug. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)
The ship was expected to dock at Ashdod late Tuesday and start offloading the aid on Wednesday.
Some 700 tons of the aid is from Cyprus, purchased with money donated by the United Arab Emirates to the so-called Amalthea Fund, set up last year for donors to help with seaborne aid. The rest comes from Italy, the Maltese government, a Catholic religious order in Malta and the Kuwaiti nongovernmental organization Al Salam Association.
“The situation is beyond dire,” Cyprus Foreign Minister Constantinos Kombos told The Associated Press.
Cyprus was the staging area last year for 22,000 tons of aid deliveries by ship directly to Gaza through a pier operated by the international charity World Central Kitchen and a U.S. military-run docking facility known as the Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore system.
By late July 2024, aid groups pulled out of the project, ending a mission plagued by repeated weather and security problems that limited how much food and other emergency supplies could get to those in need.
Cypriot Foreign Ministry said the aid mission is led by the United Nations but is a coordinated effort — once offloaded at Ashdod, U.N. employees will arrange for the aid to be trucked to storage areas and food stations operated by the World Central Kitchen.
The charity, which was behind the first aid shipment to Gaza from Cyprus last year aboard a tug-towed barge, is widely trusted in the battered territory.
“The contribution of everyone involved is crucial and their commitment incredible,” Kombos said.
Shipborne deliveries can bring much larger quantities of aid than the air drops that several nations have recently made in Gaza.
United Nations Office for Operations Chief Jorge Moreira da Silva called Tuesday's shipment a “crucial step in alleviating suffering in Gaza.”
“We need rapid, unhindered and safe flow of humanitarian aid for all civilians in need,” he posted on X.
The latest shipment comes a day after Hamas said it has accepted a new proposal from Arab mediators for a ceasefire. Israel has not approved the latest proposal so far.
Israel announced plans to reoccupy Gaza City and other heavily populated areas after ceasefire talks stalled last month, raising the possibility of a worsening humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, which experts say is sliding into famine.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has dismissed reports of starvation in Gaza as “lies” promoted by Hamas. But the U.N. last week warned that starvation and malnutrition in the Palestinian territory are at their highest levels since the war began with the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, in which the militants abducted 251 people and killed around 1,200, mostly civilians.
Gaza’s Health Ministry, which is part of the Hamas-run government and staffed by medical professionals, said the Palestinian death toll from 22 months of war has passed 62,000. It does not say how many were civilians or combatants, but says women and children make up around half the dead. The United Nations and other independent experts view its figures as the most reliable count of casualties.
Jalal Uddin, electrical and technology officer aboard a Panamanian-flagged ship watches as containers filled with humanitarian aid for the people of Gaza are being loaded aboard the vessel at Cyprus' main port in Limassol, on Monday, Aug. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)
Containers loaded with humanitarian aid for the people of Gaza, including flour, pasta, baby food and canned goods, is being loaded aboard a Panamanian-flagged ship at Cyprus' main port in Limassol, on Monday, Aug. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)
Containers loaded with humanitarian aid for the people of Gaza, including flour, pasta, baby food and canned goods, is being loaded aboard a Panamanian-flagged ship at Cyprus' main port in Limassol, on Monday, Aug. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)
Containers loaded with humanitarian aid for the people of Gaza, including flour, pasta, baby food and canned goods, is being loaded aboard a Panamanian-flagged ship at Cyprus' main port in Limassol, on Monday, Aug. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)
Jalal Uddin, electrical and technology officer aboard a Panamanian-flagged ship watches as containers filled with humanitarian aid for the people of Gaza are being loaded aboard the vessel at Cyprus' main port in Limassol, on Monday, Aug. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — For days it seemed there was no way out of the latest standoff between Europe and the United States: U.S. President Donald Trump insisted he must have Greenland — and would settle for nothing short of total ownership.
Even after he dropped the threat of force in a speech in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday, the impasse remained. Enter: Mark Rutte.
The NATO secretary-general appears to have been instrumental in persuading Trump to scrap the threat of slapping punitive tariffs on eight European nations to press for U.S. control over Greenland — a stunning reversal shortly after insisting he wanted to get the island “including right, title and ownership.”
In a post on his social media site, Trump said he had agreed with Rutte on a “framework of a future deal” on Arctic security at the World Economic Forum in Davos, potentially defusing tensions that had far-reaching geopolitical implications.
Little is known about what the agreement entails — and Trump could change course again, but for now Rutte has earned his reputation as the “Trump Whisperer.”
That’s only the latest nickname for the man long known as “Teflon Mark” during his domination of Dutch politics for a dozen years.
Rutte's reputation for successfully charming the U.S. president took flight last year when he referred to Donald Trump as “daddy” during an alliance summit in The Hague and sent him a flattering text message.
Matthew Kroenig, vice president and senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, said the dramatic scenes in Davos underscored Rutte's ability to keep NATO’s most powerful leader on board.
“I think Secretary-General Rutte has emerged as one of Europe’s most effective diplomats and Trump whisperers,” Kroenig said. “He does seem to have a way of speaking to Trump that keeps the United States and the Trump administration engaged in NATO in a constructive way.”
Rutte’s success in dealing with Trump appears to revolve around his willingness to use charm and flattery while revealing little of what the two leaders discuss. It's a tactic that Rutte used to marshal coalition partners in nearly 13 years as Dutch prime minister.
Trump himself highlighted Rutte's effusive friendliness before he set off for Davos this week, publishing a text message from the NATO chief on his Truth Social platform. In it, Rutte addresses “Mr. President, dear Donald” and praises Trump for his diplomacy in Syria, Gaza and Ukraine.
“I am committed to finding a way forward on Greenland. Can't wait to see you. Yours, Mark,” the message ended.
Rutte became a poster boy for Dutch consensus politics while leading four often fractious ruling coalitions on his way to becoming the Netherlands’ longest-serving leader, surviving a number of domestic political scandals over the years and earning the nickname “Teflon Mark” because the fallout never seemed to stick to him for long.
The back cover of a 2016 book about Rutte by Dutch journalist Sheila Sitalsing, who followed him when he was prime minister, calls him “a phenomenon.”
“With indestructible cheerfulness he navigates the fragmented political landscape, recklessly forges the most extraordinary alliances and steadily works towards a new Netherlands,” it adds.
Rutte and his government resigned in 2021 to take responsibility for a child care allowance scandal in which thousands of parents were wrongly accused of fraud. But he bounced back to win national elections two months later with a slightly larger share of the vote and began his fourth and last term in office.
In another scandal that he survived, Rutte said in an interview that he couldn’t recall being informed about the Dutch bombing of Hawija that killed dozens of Iraqi civilians in 2015. In 2022, he survived a no-confidence motion in parliament in a debate about deleting messages from his old-school Nokia cell phone. Critics accused him of concealing state activity — but he insisted the messages just took up too much space in his phone.
Opposition lawmaker Attje Kuiken quipped: “It appears that the prime minister’s phone memory is used just as selectively as the prime minister’s own memory.”
His winning smile and enduring optimism, along with his habit of riding his bicycle to work while chomping on an apple seemed to help cement his popularity in the Netherlands, where such down-to-earth behavior is prized. When his last coalition collapsed in 2023 in a dispute over reining in migration, Rutte again leaned on that image, driving an old Saab station wagon to a royal palace to hand his resignation to King Willem-Alexander.
Just landing the NATO chief's job showed how adept Rutte is at navigating turbulent geopolitical waters. He managed to convince entrenched doubters, including Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to back his candidacy.
“It took a very long time. It’s a complicated process, but it’s an honor that it appears to have happened,” Rutte told reporters after securing all the support he needed to become secretary-general.
Rutte's soft diplomatic skills were seen as a key asset for the leader of the 32-nation alliance as it faced Trump's repeated criticism while navigating how to support Ukraine in war against Russia.
Several hours before Trump made his dramatic reversal on Greenland, Finnish President Alexander Stubb — another European leader credited with having a way with Trump — was asked during a panel discussion on European security in Davos “who or what can diffuse the tensions” over Greenland?
“Oh, Mark Rutte,” Stubb said, to laughter in the audience and among the panel that included the Dutchman himself.
Associated Press writers Lorne Cook in Brussels and Ali Swenson in Washington contributed.
President Donald Trump, right, meets with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte during a meeting on the sidelines of the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte speaks during a meeting with President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Secretary General of NATO Mark Rutte speaks during an Ukrainian Breakfast alongside the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Thursday, Jan. 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
President Donald Trump, right, meets with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte during a meeting on the sidelines of the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
