In light of the European Union's ban on funding and cooperation with Israeli institutions operating in the "occupied territories," Douglas Murray asks the obvious question
"Occupied Territories": What About Cyprus, Kashmir, Tibet?
After all, there is the occupations by China of bordering Tibet, Pakistan of bordering Kashmir as well as Morocco of the Western Sahara -- none of which prevents the EU from having full diplomatic and trade relations with these countries without a whimper or tear for the occupied.
Then there is Turkey's occupation of Cyprus.
Of course, what makes the EU's latest double-standard even more delicious is that the occupied island of Cyprus is actually a member of the EU. As such, shouldn't it surely command the most detailed and persistent attention from the international body?
Yet this is not so. The northern part of Cyprus has been illegally annexed for the last four decades by Turkey. It is not as though Turkey shares a border with the island. Nor does it have -- as Israel has with the West Bank -- any legitimate historical, political or other territorial claims on the northern part of the island. There is no security reason for Turkey to sustain its occupation, as there is an obvious need for Israel to have defensible borders that do not permit terrorists from the West Bank to fire rockets into Israel, as do its friends in post-disengagement Gaza or southern Lebanon.
But unlike Israel and the West Bank, the Turkish invasion of Cyprus is not even a disputed matter. It was certainly not some understandable territorial gain made after aggressive war waged by Greece. It was outright theft -- an annexation: state terrorism. The entire international community recognizes it as such. Yet in 2013 not only is Turkey not an enemy of the EU, and not only is it a country which enjoys complete diplomatic and trade relations with the EU, it is a country which many leading members and officials of the EU actually want to promote into a full member-state of the EU. [emphasis added]
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European Union High Representative Catherine Ashton. EU guidelines to Israel:
must be a slow day in the Middle East Credit: Wiki Commons |
Indeed, the brazenness of the EU in dictating borders to Israel, relieving the Abbas regime of having to fulfill its obligation to negotiate them is exceeded only by its complete apathy for the fate of Cyprus:
Into the fifth decade of Turkish occupation of Cyprus, there is still no serious dictating by the EU to Turkey over what it must do about northern Cyprus. Turkey does not find itself under even the most remote international pressure finally to disengage from its illegal occupation of the northern part of Cyprus. And that is because for some inexplicable reason the EU does not consider it imperative that Turkey should disengage from the illegal occupation of an EU member state. It does not consider that the future of any region depends on this action. Yet it does persist, even now, with its view that it can dictate to Israel about its borders. And that it can have a constructive role in doing so. Of all the fallacies of the EU, that is surely the topmost.
Read the whole thing.
With 100,000 dead in Syria, Egypt in chaos, the potential for Hezbollah in Syria to ignite a Shiite-Sunni clash in the region -- the EU barges in on an issue which will do nothing to quell any of these firestorms.
Just one more indication of the failure of the European Union.
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