From the West Bank to Κyrenia: The Geopolitics of Settlements
From Hebron to Famagusta, occupation is gradually transformed into “normality” through settlement expansion, demographic engineering, and the appropriation of property.
International politics is often built on contradictions. States that invoke international law in one part of the world stand accused of violating it in another.
Alliances are shaped around strategic interests, even when they conflict with the very principles publicly proclaimed by those involved.
Nowhere is this paradox more visible than in the parallel examination of the situation in the West Bank and the occupied territories of Cyprus.
The recent briefing to the United Nations Security Council by Max Rodenbeck, Project Director for Israel-Palestine at the International Crisis Group, was particularly revealing. Rodenbeck described an accelerating process of de facto annexation in the West Bank through the expansion of Israeli settlements, increasing settler violence, and mounting economic pressure on Palestinians.
His intervention went beyond the humanitarian dimensions of the crisis. It highlighted that settlement expansion is not merely a by-product of conflict, but a deliberate instrument of geopolitical control and territorial transformation.
And this is precisely where Cyprus inevitably enters the discussion.
How convincing can the narrative be that Israel is a steadfast supporter and strategic ally of the Republic of Cyprus, when the same international community accuses the Israeli state of pursuing policies of settlement expansion, demographic alteration, and systematic territorial control in occupied lands?
The practices condemned in the West Bank bear unavoidable similarities to what the Republic of Cyprus has denounced for decades regarding the Turkish occupation of the island.
At the same time, Turkey consistently presents itself as a defender of the Palestinian cause and a vocal critic of Israeli actions in the occupied Palestinian territories. Yet how credible can that narrative remain when the same country continues to maintain occupation troops in Cyprus, encourages settler expansion in the occupied north, and tolerates — or facilitates — the appropriation of Greek Cypriot properties?
The contradiction is impossible to ignore.
Israel invokes security concerns to justify policies that much of the international community considers illegal. Turkey invokes solidarity with Palestinians while applying in Cyprus practices strikingly similar to those it condemns in Israel.
In reality, both states stand accused of relying on comparable instruments of power:
- military occupation,
- demographic engineering,
- settlement expansion,
- economic and administrative control,
- creation of irreversible faits accomplis,
- transformation of property regimes,
- gradual normalisation of occupation through economic activity.
Cyprus has lived through this process for more than five decades.
In recent interventions, both Oz Karahan and Aziz Sah drew attention to precisely these issues. Karahan warned that the appropriation of Greek Cypriot properties is not merely a legal violation but a mechanism for entrenching occupation permanently. Sah, meanwhile, stressed that the continuous influx of settlers and the economy developing around appropriated properties threaten even the political and cultural existence of the Turkish Cypriot community itself.
Even more revealing are the demographic figures presented. If these figures accurately reflect reality, then demographic transformation is no longer a future concern but an already established political fact.
The same logic can increasingly be observed in the West Bank, where ongoing settlement expansion continues to create irreversible realities on the ground.
The crucial element in both cases is that occupation no longer seeks merely military control. It seeks the transformation of reality itself:
of geography,
of demography,
of economy,
of memory,
of political sovereignty.
And perhaps the most alarming aspect is not only the policies themselves.
Perhaps it is the growing international familiarity with them.
Occupations are not consolidated solely through military force. They are consolidated when the international community continues to engage economically, diplomatically, and strategically as though the resulting realities are somehow normal.
Today, the Republic of Cyprus maintains close strategic cooperation with Israel in the fields of energy and security. At the same time, Turkey attempts to politically capitalise on its support for the Palestinian cause across the Muslim world.
Yet the fundamental reality remains inescapable:
When states implement or tolerate policies of occupation, settlement expansion, and demographic transformation, the moral credibility of their narratives becomes profoundly weakened.
From Hebron to Famagusta, the issue is not merely one of international law.
It is one of consistency in international political morality itself.
And perhaps the greatest danger is not settlement expansion or appropriation alone.
Perhaps it is the moment the world ceases to be shocked by them.
When occupation becomes normalised, justice is exiled.
- Dinos Toumazos is a co-founder and director of Agora Dialogue.