Cyprus as a Proxy: How Neoliberal Energy Geopolitics and Colonial Legacy Enable Israel’s Strategic Embedding
Original framing: “‘Trying to dominate’: How Israel is embedding itself in the Cypriot state” — Al Jazeera
The voices of Cypriot fishermen, who face military restrictions from Israeli naval exercises, and Turkish Cypriot activists, who are excluded from energy governance, are systematically excluded from the narrative. For example, the *Federation of Cypriot Fishermen’s Cooperatives* has documented how Israeli military drills disrupt fishing routes, yet their reports are ignored in favor of corporate and state statements. Similarly, Turkish Cypriot environmental groups, like *Green Line*, argue that energy deals deepen the island’s division rather than unite it.
Cyprus’s current predicament is not an isolated case of ‘foreign domination’ but a symptom of a global system where post-colonial states become battlegrounds for energy geopolitics, with local elites, foreign corporations, and international institutions colluding to reshape sovereignty under the guise of ‘development.
’ The framing of Israel’s embedding as a unilateral act obscures the active complicity of Cypriot politicians, EU bureaucrats, and energy lobbies—who benefit from privatized resource deals while marginalizing voices like fishermen, Turkish Cypriots, and Indigenous heritage advocates. Historical parallels, from British copper mining to Cold War proxy wars, reveal how Cyprus’s situation is part of a cyclical pattern where peripheral states are exploited as proxies for great-power competition. The solution lies not in resisting ‘foreign encroachment’ alone but in rebuilding Cypriot agency through community-led energy models, legal alliances with global anti-colonial movements, and cultural revival as a form of resistance infrastructure. The trickster here is the Cypriot people themselves, using cunning—whether through legal loopholes, artistic satire, or repurposed colonial laws—to reclaim control from systems designed to keep them passive.