Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stood at the podium at the Presidential Palace in Nicosia on Thursday – along with the leaders of Greece and Cyprus – and spoke about the historic nature of their three-way summit and the emerging alliance of these three eastern Mediterranean nations.

This was a summit with countries that have for decades been Israel’s largest detractors in Europe. It would be the equivalent of Israel forging a strategic alliance in the future with presently hyper-critical Sweden and Ireland.

The change of attitude of the Greeks and Cypriots did not come about because the leaders of those two countries suddenly woke up and saw the light.

Indeed, Greece is now being ruled by Syriza, a radical left-wing party.

These new ties are not the result of a sudden discovery of long-hidden sympathy and empathy with Zionism. Instead it is a result of the discovery of gas, which has created common interests.

While some trace Israel’s flourishing relations with Greece and Cyprus to 2010 and the Mavi Marmara incident, which led to a nosedive in Jerusalem’s then-strategic relationship with Turkey – Greece and Cyprus’s historic enemy – the true turning point started a couple years prior, when gas fields were discovered in the eastern Mediterranean.

Read the article in full at the Jerusalem Post.