Sri Lanka will be among countries worst hit if Israel-Gaza conflict continues

The escalation of violence in the Middle East will have wide reaching repercussions and Sri Lanka, already reeling under the worst of economic times, will also be impacted. 

If the war engulfs other countries in the ME, not only will the livelihoods of thousands of Sri Lankans working in the region be under threat, but being a major buyer of Sri Lanka tea, any destabilisation in the region will also impact the tea trade. Oil prices too will rise if violence is not contained, and a ceasefire declared soon and this too will impact poorer countries such as Sri Lanka badly. President Ranil Wickremesinghe recently weighed in on the conflict saying this crisis will only create a further shortage of fuel with prices remaining high for a longer time. “This is a big blow to the developing economies,” he said.

Sri Lanka is a small fry in the global stage, but it needs to take a strong stance on the ongoing assault on Palestine by Israel which has already left hundreds dead and many more injured. As a country that suffered for decades under terrorism, the President has rightly condemned the violence perpetrated by the terrorist group Hamas on Israeli civilians, but the same stance should be taken in condemning the ongoing assault on Palestinian civilians. The invariable comparisons are being made on the deaths of civilians that took place during the last stages of the military operations against the LTTE in northern Sri Lanka in 2009 including shelling of hospitals and death of civilians as the conflict in the ME escalates. 

While Sri Lanka is facing censure in international bodies such as the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and others for violating the Geneva Convention and international rules for war, there has largely been silence from these bodies on the death of civilians and attacks on them by the Israel armed forces.

Herein lies the dilemma that the UN faces in the implementation of international law equally. Since the formation of the UN in 1945, the world has avoided a world war, but large-scale killings of civilians and genocide have taken place with little action from the international community until after the worst was over. The Rwandan genocide of 1994, the Srebrenica massacre of 1995 and the massive scale violence against Rohingya people in 2017 are some instances where the UN and Western countries that take a morally superior stance against poorer nations failed to intervene to stop the killing of civilians. The world is witnessing another massacre in the Gaza strip but given the Western blocs’ failure to rein Israel in, it seems that little will be done to stop the killing of civilians until after thousands have been butchered. The same countries and blocs that took a stronger stance against the Russian invasion of Ukraine are muted in their condemnation of Israel.

The world learns little from history as can be seen from the escalating violence. Trying to argue who came first to the Holy Land is like the perpetually unanswerable riddle “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” This applies to all countries in the world where wars are waged for ownership of land. The international community should not look back to ending the escalating conflict in the ME which could spread the world over, by bringing misery and suffering to the entirety of the human race. Instead, what is needed is an immediate ceasefire and for the parties involved to sit down and come to a final settlement to the festering problems of the Palestinian people. 

The decision makers on the world stage need to take some serious decisions now before the world is pushed to the abyss. Sri Lanka too should do what little it can to push for an immediate end to hostilities. The violence may be taking place thousands of miles away from our shores but it’s not one which anyone can escape. Suing for peace is the only option.