• Energy, shipping, and trade risks for Sri Lanka
• A regional conflict would be much worse
• West’s moral high ground duplicity exposed

The Sri Lanka mission in Tel Aviv yesterday (21) said that a list names of Sri Lankan citizens residing in the embattled Gaza Strip and who wished to leave via the Rafah Border Crossing to Egypt has been provided to Israeli and Egyptian authorities to facilitate their evacuation to safety as the ambitious ground offensive into the Gaza Strip, named ‘Operation Swords of Iron’ by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), gathers steam.

According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Sri Lankan Missions in Tel Aviv and Ramallah are continuing to closely monitor the welfare of Sri Lankans in the affected areas.  A desk has been established under the Presidential Secretariat, with the participation of senior Foreign Ministry officials, to coordinate welfare measures of Sri Lankans in these areas, it is learnt.

As of yesterday (21) evening, the latest war in Israel and Palestine had claimed the life of one Sri Lankan citizen, a 40-year-old woman who was working as a caregiver. Her death is the only verified major casualty for Sri Lanka due to the conflict, which emerged from the unprecedented attack launched by the terrorist groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) against Israel earlier this month.

According to the United Nations, two weeks into the conflict, nearly 1,400 Israelis and nearly 3,800 Palestinians have been reported killed. The numbers keep growing and multiple sources cite different figures. 

Given the nature of information warfare and propaganda which has become a mainstay in such conflicts, as Sri Lanka has experienced in the past, a verified toll of deaths and injuries may only be available much later on, or perhaps may remain a point of contention for decades to come.  

According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), as of 19 October, nearly 13,000 Palestinians have been injured along with 4,600 Israelis, over the last two weeks. The exact status of the number of Israeli hostages kidnapped by Hamas and their status remains unverified. Many were women and children.

The looming risks for Sri Lanka

With fears about the conflict growing into a regional crisis, Sri Lanka is caught in a precarious situation. Concerns of the conflict growing into a regional one like seen in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s have triggered the international energy market, particularly the crude oil market, to increase prices. The possibility of the Suez Canal’s operations being disrupted also poses a significant risk to key supply chains and shipping that Sri Lanka is dependent on.

A regional conflict between states, or even a broader proxy war by key powers, would also cause disruptions to remittance inflows to Sri Lanka from the large diaspora and migrant worker population in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

One of the first groups of Sri Lankans that will face the heat from a regional growth of the conflict is the Sri Lanka Army Peacekeeping contingent which is stationed at the Israeli-Lebanese border. Given the stark disregard for international law and norms exhibited by both sides of the war up to date, the immunities afforded to UN Blue Helmets is not likely to be factored in if the situation deteriorates further.   

Given Sri Lanka’s growing economic and debt crisis, any major disruption could throw the still-fragile recovery environment in the bankrupt island nation into a tailspin. Sri Lanka has already increased fuel and electricity tariffs several times to reflect cost pricing and is poised to increase electricity (largely dependent on coal and diesel power plants) and fuel prices again, even though there has been significant public resistance to the move.

The Ministry of Power and Energy last week stressed that fuel reserves were being secured for several months. President Ranil Wickremesinghe has also raised concerns about what an escalation of the conflict would do to global oil prices.  

The return of focus to MENA may also embolden action by countries like Russia on the Ukraine front and could trigger more posturing by states like the DPRK – both of which could bring with it further international complications. The conflict may also trigger an arms race in the region and beyond, leaving less funds for crisis management, aid, and markets.

If the Gaza offensive triggers non-state actors like Lebanon-based terror group Hezbollah and others like ISIS and Al-Qaeda to join the fray, there could be a string of regional and international attacks which may focus on ‘soft targets,’ like tourists and tourist infrastructure. It goes without saying that Sri Lanka can ill-afford another terrorist attack on ‘home soil,’ especially as the nation has pinned its hopes largely on tourism picking up to regain its economic footing.

A broader regional conflict would also create many refugees and Sri Lanka’s preparedness for a possible large-scale evacuation of its nationals from MENA is, to put it mildly, near non-existent.

A senior defence official who spoke to The Sunday Morning on terms of anonymity said that Sri Lanka had rushed to hold discussions with regional powers and countries about possibly piggybacking on their citizen evacuation contingency plans, and was reaching out to countries in MENA to seek possible entry options for Sri Lankans who may need to be evacuated.  

A senior Foreign Ministry official who spoke to The Sunday Morning on terms of anonymity said that the establishment had been caught off guard by the rapidly-evolving situation in Israel and was struggling to get verified information and coordinate a response. “We don’t have the capacity or the capability to quickly evacuate our citizens. We are seeking help from friendly states,” the official said. 

Given that Sri Lanka has faced several crises in the MENA region over the years, from the first and second Gulf Wars and Covid-19, one would think the Government would have designed contingency plans to evacuate Sri Lankans from the volatile region. Perhaps such foresight is too much to expect from our policymakers and State officials.

‘Our darkest hour,’ says Netanyahu

Israel – the myth of the security goliath, the apex intelligence-driven and technologically-superior nation of Spartans – has been shattered by the events of 7 October.

Speaking to UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak last week, former Israeli Para-Commando-turned-politician, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu termed the Hamas-led attack “our darkest hour”. Israel’s land operation into Gaza is aimed at destroying the threat from Hamas, it is reported.

According to US think tank RAND’s Political Scientist and Strategy and Doctrine Programme Director Raphael Cohen, Israel’s strategy to contain threats from Gaza, termed “mowing the grass – killing the perpetrators along with some number of civilians – is buying at best a few years of relative peace and fuelling further long-term radicalisation. And so the cycle continues ad infinitum.” This is not only an indication of strategic fatalism on the part of Israel; it also reflects a large measure of hubris.

“At its core lies the assumption that Israel can control the rheostat in Gaza, hitting Hamas just hard enough to deter it from attacking Israel but not so hard that Gaza implodes into chaos or explodes into a regional war,” Cohen stated.

“That is a hard if not impossible balance to strike year after year, especially as Gaza’s internal pressures mount. Its two million inhabitants are packed into an area roughly the size of Philadelphia, 80% of them impoverished and 46% unemployed. Some 108,000 cubic metres of untreated sewage flow daily from the Gaza Strip into the Mediterranean Sea and potable water can be hard to come by. Against this backdrop and absent any path to something better for Gazans, no military strategy to contain the violence can succeed in the long run. 

“Without a safety valve, Gaza was bound to explode. Israel’s mowing-the-grass strategy finally failed spectacularly on 7 October. The Hamas attack underscored just how little control Israel has over Gaza. It was not just an intelligence failure and an operational failure but also a more sweeping strategic failure. The core premise behind Israel’s entire approach was proved catastrophically wrong in one morning,” Cohen opined.

While Israel’s aura of invincible intelligence and robust military image may have been tarnished by the attacks, which caught it by surprise and saw the nation’s psyche of being unbeatable shaken, they may ultimately push Israel to develop an even more hardline stance against Palestine.

It is now clear that Israel has no grand exit strategy for Gaza, despite the massive ground offensive which is about to kick off. However, while the US-allied, Western-backed State of Israel has been given carte blanche to retaliate against Hamas, its action in Gaza and the toll on Palestinians are also likely to weaken the support base Israel has built for years.    

Israel has called up 360,000 reservists and amassed a huge army around Gaza’s narrow coastal strip, while reinforcing defences on the northern border against the possibility of an attack from Hezbollah in Lebanon. 

International rights watchdogs have critiqued Israel for disproportionate use of force within the densely-populated Gaza Strip, for indiscriminate bombing, and the use of banned weapon types such as white phosphorus.

“Israel’s use of white phosphorus in military operations in Gaza and Lebanon puts civilians at risk of serious and long-term injuries,” Human Rights Watch said last week, calling the move a violation of international humanitarian law.

While Israel is justified in pursuing terrorists under international law, the rationale for collective punishment and disproportionate use of force on civilians cannot be condoned. 

The alleged bombing of a hospital complex within Gaza has become a contentious issue, with Hamas, PIJ, and the IDF trading accusations. The incident, which reportedly killed several thousand people, underscores the brutal reality of the type of warfare which is being waged by all parties in the conflict zone and epitomises the grey haze which is a trait of asymmetrical warfare. Such incidents, which should be strongly condoned by all, remain unexplained for years to come. 

Yesterday (21), the US-based Associated Press news agency claimed that it believed rockets fired towards Israel from Gaza which may have gone astray were likely the cause of the explosion, in an article titled ‘AP visual analysis: Rocket from Gaza appeared to go astray, likely caused deadly hospital explosion’.

“AP ran its visual analysis by a half-dozen experts who all agreed the most likely scenario was a rocket from within Gaza that veered off and came apart seconds before the explosion,” the AP report said. However, with little evidence available from the ground and since the analysis is based on imagery study, the causes of the explosion remain unverified by an internationally-accepted agency or inquiry.   

Sri Lanka’s stance

Sri Lanka is gravely concerned by the ongoing escalation of violence and military action in Gaza, which has resulted in deaths and injuries to many innocent civilians and children and caused a grave humanitarian situation, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, calling for the free movement of essential items and humanitarian aid, including food, fuel, medicine, and supply of electricity and water to Gaza and urging all sides to prevent further civilian casualties.

The ministry spokesperson said that Sri Lanka condemned terrorism in all its forms, including by all those who resorted to violence to achieve their goals, whether political or otherwise, and further stated that Sri Lanka strongly condemned the violent terror attacks targeting civilians in Israel by Hamas and called for immediate release of all hostages taken into Gaza.

The ministry reiterated that Sri Lanka remained committed to supporting a just and comprehensive negotiated political settlement to the Palestine issue in line with the relevant United Nations resolutions, leading to two states – Palestine and Israel – living side by side based on the 1967 borders.

There have been widespread protests in Sri Lanka, mainly in support of Palestine and calling for Israel to end its hostilities. Support for Israel is not non-existent, with some of the view that Sri Lanka should follow India in standing by Israel due to historic war-time support.

Duplicity of the ‘moral police of the world’

The conflict has also returned the spotlight on the duplicity of the US and Europe, given the narratives of ‘rules-based order’ and ‘human rights,’ on which the collective West often lectures the Global South. It also throws a spanner in the works of the global international relations system, which is based on the principles of sovereign states being viewed as equals.

Former Foreign Secretary and Sri Lanka’s Permanent Representative in Geneva H.M.G.S. Palihakkara speaking on the issue opined: “What’s happening in Palestine with the ongoing conflict, although a lot of people and powers that be talk about a rules-based order, what they are in fact talking about is not the force of rules, but the ‘rule of force’. They claim that they advocate a rules-based order. But in fact what they are doing shows that there is some other doctrine which underpins the ‘order’. They may be a balance of power, strategic deterrent, mutilation, and so forth.

“If international law and humanitarian principles dictate policy, as they claim, everyone should be asking for a ceasefire. A humanitarian ceasefire. What the US said at the UNSC is that basically the time is not right for that (ceasefire) – basically saying we need to give space to Israel to do what it is doing: to finish Hamas. They (the West) say one thing and have in practice shown another.”

Palihakkara, responding to a question, said that the stance taken by Europe and the US on Israel was in stark contrast to what they had told Sri Lanka during its conflict.

Navigating the ‘force-based order’

A serving Sri Lankan diplomat in Europe told The Sunday Morning on terms of anonymity that the so-called rules-based order principles had been and would continue to be a narrative that major powers like the permanent five members of the UN Security Council (UNSC) would continue to push for.

“The rules-based order will be what is in the policy documents, treaties, and the UN Charter, but in practice, Washington, London, Paris, Moscow, the other European cities, and Beijing, and to a lesser but pronounced degree Tokyo, and increasingly Korea and Australia, will put into effect a force-based posture. We should not fool ourselves with the idea of ‘sovereign equality,’ which is in the UN Charter. In practice, it was never a reality. Sovereignty has not been an absolute and never in practice”

When asked about how Sri Lanka should prepare for a world order such as that which was playing out in reality, the official opined that Sri Lanka could not position itself based on the ideal situation of a rules-based order, which had never existed.

“We need to find our niche in the ‘force-based structure’. We need to realise that we will not be able to shape the order. What we can do is, with some degree of self-respect and ethics, find a way to ‘plug in’ to the system without getting militarily aligned or allied with any one given power. And we need to build resilience to weather disruptions and forge a stronger economic base. We also need to rebuild our credibility and network better. Then Sri Lanka can become less of a pushover,” the diplomat said.