Israel and Cyprus will hold joint military exercises in the Mediterranean Sea later this month. The exercise will focus on search and rescue operations and on protecting the two countries’ natural gas assets:

The Ministry of Defense in Cyprus announced that in the context of the cooperation between the Republic of Cyprus and the State of Israel in matters of search and rescue within the Exclusive Economic Zone and the areas of responsibility for search and rescue of the two countries, a joint search and rescue exercise will take place on April 23…

On the Cypriot side, patrol vessels of the Cyprus Port and Marine Police and of the Cyprus Navy, search and rescue helicopters of the Police and the Aviation of Cyprus, as well as the Medical Rescue Teams of the Cyprus Civil Defense and of the Medical and Nursing Services will participate in the exercise. On the side of Israel, five ships of the Israeli Navy will participate in the exercise.

The exercise comes as tensions between Israel and Turkey remain unresolved. Ankara has blasted Cypriot energy development and Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened to deploy warships over the issue.

Israeli-Cypriot ties, meanwhile, have strengthened in recent years. In 2008, bilateral trade between the two countries approached 600 million euros, with Israel the 5th-largest exporter to Cyprus. By 2011 that figure had climbed to 910 million euros. A 2012 visit to Israel by a delegation from the Cyprus Chamber of Commerce and Industry was hailed as “one of the most successful delegations ever made” by the body.

Also in 2012 Cyprus’s foreign minister Erato Kozakou-Marcoullis lauded the prospect of multilateral alliances built on a foundation of Israeli-Cypriot ties:

Israel’s “only sure corridor” to strong alliances crosses through Cyprus and the West, the island nation’s foreign minister said. Erato Kozakou-Marcoullis, addressing the American Jewish Committee’s annual Global Forum in Washington on May 3, described enhanced ties between the two nations in recent years, partly as a result of cooperation in exploring for oil and natural gas deposits in the Mediterranean.

She noted Turkish opposition to such cooperation, calling it “bullying,” and said that “In Israel there is a growing sense that the only sure corridor toward friendly states lies to the west, in other words through Cyprus to the rest of Europe, and therefore the corridor must be kept open.” Kozakou-Marcoullis emphasized that she was not proposing an Israel-Cyprus military alliance, but added, “I think that it is fair to say that there are also others who read the geopolitical map in very similar ways at this time. One of them, I believe, is the United States.”

[Photo: Hibr / Flickr]