Dodecanese campaign lies in the south-eastern Aegean Sea, and had been under Italian control since the Italo-Turkish War in 1911. During Italian rule, the strategically well-placed islands became a focus of Italian colonial ambitions in the Eastern Mediterranean. Rhodes, the largest of the islands, was a major military and aerial base. The island of Leros, with its excellent deep-water port of Lakki (Portolago), was transformed into a heavily fortified aeronautical base, "the Corregidor of the Mediterranean", as Benito Mussolini, the Italian leader, boasted. An early British attempt to contest Italian control of the Dodecanese, codenamed Operation Abstention, was thwarted in February 1941,
Greek island affair Greek island affair The Greek island affair (, "Parashat HaEe HaYevani") was an Israeli political scandal involving David Appel, Ariel Sharon, at the time a minister in the Likud party, and others close to Sharon. The scandal consisted of charges, later dropped, that Appel had obtained favourable treatment from Sharon and his allies, which would help him and his fellow investors purchase the small rocky island of Patroklos at the tip of Attica, in the town of Palaia Fokaia, for the purpose of building a multimillion-dollar resort complex. The project was illegally obstructed. While Ariel Sharon was Foreign Minister under