Arugam Bay: Gentle warning, Mr. President

“There is a British proverb about the camel and the tent. At first the camel sticks one leg in the tent, and eventually it slips into it. This must be our policy” — Chaim Weizmann the Russian born British Zionist leader when replying to criticisms against the 1917 Balfour Declaration

- - By Dr. Ameer Ali

IT was in 2023 during Ranil Wickremasinghe’s Presidency that Sri Lanka signed a deal with Israel to export 10,000 agricultural workers to that country after Netanyahu Government banned 20,000 Palestinian agricultural workers immediately after Hamas fired those deadly rockets on 7 October that year.

Faced with a financially bankrupt treasury and a mismanaged economy RW had no choice but to export skilled and unskilled Sri Lankans to reduce the rising rate of unemployment and replenish treasury’s coffer from foreign remittances. Thus, Sri Lanka, out of necessity profited from Palestinian misery.

At present there are reportedly around 8,000 Sri Lankans working not only in agriculture but also in the construction and household sectors of Israel. This is miniscule in comparison to more than 100,000 Sri Lankans currently employed in Arab Middle East. Therefore, there is nothing to brag about employment opportunities for Sri Lankan workers in Israel.

Although Jewish contact with Sri Lanka is said to go back to biblical times when King Solomon sent merchant ships to Galle known as “Tarshish”, in modern era it was during D.S. Senanayake’s Prime Ministership that relations with the new state of Israel commenced. In fact, Sri Lanka’s first gunship “Gajabahu I” was imported from Israel. But SWRD’s strong nationalist agenda followed by Sirimavo’s passionate commitment to the non-align movement and friendship with the Arab world including PLO severed Sri Lanka’s ties with Israel. It was JR in 1977 who reopened it. (For a brief note on this chequered history, see “How Israeli diplomatic ties were reversed in Sri Lanka” by Punsara Amarasinghe in Lanka Guardian 10 Feb. 2021).

Opportunity to stick one leg into the tent