NICOSIA -- At first glance, Cyprus might seem a likely friend for Israel in a hostile region. An eastern Mediterranean island just 105 km from Syria, the Republic of Cyprus is a democracy with a free press, thriving banking and shipping industries, and a per capita gross domestic product of $16,000, approaching that of Israel.

But Cyprus is also divided -- 35 percent of the island is occupied by Turkey, which periodically sends its fighter jets into Greek Cypriot airspace. This colors Cyprus' views of the conflict simmering elsewhere in the Levant. Many Cypriots conflate the Palestinian struggle with their own troubles as a small nation illegally dominated by a powerful neighbor.

Comparisons of northern Cyprus on the one hand and the West Bank and Gaza on the other are, of course, flawed: Unlike Turkey, Israel has seriously negotiated to divest itself of its territories, and Greek Cypriots have never cultivated a homicide-suicide cult that celebrates the murder of Turkish infants in pizzerias. Likewise, Turkey need not fear for its national survival were it to pull out of Cyprus.

Still, Cypriots see similarities in the two causes. Just as Jerusalem has built settlements in the West Bank, infuriating Palestinians, Ankara has brought thousands of Turks from Anatolia to live in northern Cyprus. A recent editorial in The Cyprus Weekly drew the connection, stating that this island "is itself the victim of a situation where Security Council resolutions are rejected by a foreign occupying power."

A British colony until 1960, Cyprus' ethnic Greeks and Turks shared an uneasy peace until Greece backed a coup in 1974 to overthrow the island's elected government and install a regime that favored uniting with Greece. To protect the Turks, Ankara invaded, and 162,000 Greeks fled their homes in the north; in turn, thousands of Cypriot Turks fled to the occupied part of the island. In 1983, the administration of Turkish leader Rauf Denktash declared his zone to be the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (it is recognized by Turkey alone).

Today Nicosia is a divided capital. On the Greek side, Lidras Street, a broad pedestrian avenue lined with cafes and shops, dead-ends at a concrete wall and guard post. Tourists can climb a wooden platform and peer down a rubble-strewn alley at Turkish recruits in the distance.

In some places the Green Line between the two sides thins to the width of an alley. Strolling the foot of the old city wall, you may look up and see a handful of Turks at a cafe on top, sipping coffee and grinning through a chain-link fence.

With this humiliation shimmering in the haze every day, the Cypriot House of Representatives was evidently spoiling to rumble. Last month it set its sights on Jerusalem. Six members of Parliament flew to Tel Aviv on April 6 bearing, as a letter of introduction, a House resolution expressing solidarity with the Palestinians and condemning "the genocide conducted by the Sharon government."

Jetting in after Palestinian terrorists had spent the Passover week blowing up civilians, the MPs seem to have imagined they would be greeted with salt and bread and escorted to a war zone to issue joint declarations with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, whose administration Israel accuses of brainwashing and dispatching young suicide bombers.

The MPs apparently didn't foresee that an Israeli government that refused to allow European Union diplomats to meet with Arafat probably would not be impressed by representatives of a tiny island republic who stormed in hurling abuse, like the aggressive dwarf master in "Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome." Israeli border officials left the MPs to stew for several hours at Ben Gurion Airport, then stamped "denied entry" on their passports and sent them packing.

Perhaps Israel's action would have been justified on the grounds of mere irritation at Cypriot hubris, but there also were other considerations, Israeli Embassy officials in Nicosia said. The Cypriot MPs had not notified the embassy of its plans until the day before it left, which happened to be a Friday and a nonworking day in Israel. This meant the visit could not be coordinated with the Israeli Foreign Ministry.

Border guards turned back the delegation at the airport rather than let them create an incident at a roadblock or get themselves shot sneaking into Ramallah, said Eli Belotsercovsky, the embassy's deputy head of mission. And anyway, what were they expecting? "What if Israeli delegates came to Larnaca (in Cyprus) with the intention of declaring solidarity with Denktash?" Belotsercovsky said. "Arafat is our enemy now."

The delegation flew home breathing fire. Newspapers thundered denunciations of Israel. Television programs cut from footage of tanks and bulldozers on the West Bank to close-ups of the Israeli stamps in the MPs' passports. Cypriot acquaintances wanted to make sure this writer had heard about the outrage.

Meanwhile, the Cypriot government, which hadn't bestirred itself to condemn the Palestinian use of human Daisy-cutters to slaughter innocents, formally complained about the "psychological violence" that had been inflicted against the delegation. In fact, some papers would not even acknowledge the existence of Palestinian terror. The Cyprus Weekly put the word "terrorist" in quotes throughout its editorial as if the body parts strewn in Haifa and Jerusalem were the hallucinations of feverish Jews.

As for the humiliated MPs, they wanted more than just sympathy. They wanted revenge. In an interview in The Cyprus Mail, Marios Matsakis vowed to go after "Israeli interests hiding behind companies in Cyprus." (This was a curious threat on an island that welcomes offshore investment by shadowy Russian firms hiding from high taxes at home.)

He added darkly: "Israeli businessmen are big shareholders in certain companies. I will go so far as demonstrating outside their departments to stop people from buying their products."

Matsakis also vowed to have the government arrest certain "Mossad spies" working at the Larnaca airport unless he received an apology from the Israeli government. Embassy officials said Matsakis was apparently referring to the Israeli security officers who help keep would-be shoe bombers and hijackers off of El Al's passenger planes.

In a way, there was something European in the Cypriot Parliament's blundering diplomacy. Continental critics hurl accusations of "genocide" at Israel with relish (Nobel laureate Jose Saramago stated during an April visit to the West Bank that the blockade of Ramallah is "in the spirit of Auschwitz"). Cyprus is scheduled to enter the European Union, where it will find itself among kindred spirits. Unfortunately, this won't get the Turkish army out of Nicosia.