Daniel Pipes on How Cyprus Oil and Gas Reserves Drag It Into Middle East Maelstrom

The following from Daniel Pipes is reposted here with permission:

Cyprus Joins the Middle East

by Daniel Pipes
The Washington Times
November 6, 2013
http://www.danielpipes.org/13588/cyprus-oil-gas

N.B.: (1) Washington Times title: "Cyprus rides a troubled sea of oil and gas opportunity."
(2) I use Grammarly for proofreading because every time you publish a typo, the errorists win!

The Republic of Cyprus has entered the maelstrom of the world's most volatile region thanks to new-found gas and oil reserves combined with an erratic Turkish foreign policy and a civil war in Syria. Even as leaders of this Mediterranean island show skill dealing with these novel threats and opportunities, they need support from a strong U.S. Navy, something not now available.

Cyprus Terror Defendant Confesses To Hezbollah Links -- Now What?

February 20, 2013 Contact: TIP Press: press@theisraelproject.org Main Office Phone Number:  202-857-6644 Cyprus Terror Defendant Confesses To Hezbollah Links Photo: Leonid Mamchenkov / Wiki Commons Washington, Feb. 20 – A defendant on trial in Cyprus for plotting terror attacks against Israeli tourists has admitted to being a member of Hezbollah, a confession that promises to deepen pressure on the European Union to heed U.S. calls and formally designate the Iran-backed group a terrorist organization.

EU Condemns Israeli Settlements, While Europeans Build Settlements In Turkish Occupied Cyprus

[I]t appeared that the international community should have judged the dispute over Northern Cyprus far more severely than the way it viewed the dispute over the West Bank, where Israel had multiple rights that it could exercise if it decided to do so.
Dore Gold

Writing about European settlements and double standards, Dore Gold notes that Europeans flocking to buy a villa in Northern Cyprus are creating a legal problem:

It should be recalled that in 1974 the Turkish army invaded Cyprus, which had been an independent state since 1960 and took over 37 percent of the island. Tens of thousands of Greek Cypriots were expelled in this period in what they viewed was a deliberate policy of ethnic cleansing by the Turkish army. In the aftermath of the invasion, the U.N. Security Council adopted Resolution 353 which demanded "an immediate end to foreign military intervention" and called for "the withdrawal without delay from the Republic of Cyprus of foreign military personnel."