Millions of people in the Middle East dream of safe, quiet lives without drama and violent death. The last year of war, as bad as any in the region in modern times, has shown yet again that dreams of peace cannot come true while deep political, strategic and religious fault lines remain unbridged. Once again, war is reshaping the politics of the Middle East.

The Hamas offensive came out of well over a century of unresolved conflict. After Hamas burst through the thinly defended border, it inflicted the worst day the Israelis had suffered.

Around 1,200 people, mostly Israeli civilians, were killed. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, phoned President Joe Biden and told him that “We’ve never seen such savagery in the history of the state”; not “since the Holocaust.” Israel saw the attacks by Hamas as a threat to its existence.

Since then, Israel has inflicted many terrible days on the Palestinians in Gaza. Nearly 42,000 people, mostly civilians have been killed, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. Much of Gaza is in ruins. Palestinians accuse Israel of genocide.

The war has spread. Twelve months after Hamas went on the offensive the Middle East is on the edge of an even worse war; wider, deeper, even more destructive.

The death of illusions

A year of killing has stripped away layers of assumptions and illusions. One is Benjamin Netanyahu’s belief that he could manage the Palestinian issue without making concessions to their demands for self-determination.

With that went the wishful thinking that had comforted Israel’s worried Western allies. Leaders in the US and UK, and others, had convinced themselves that Netanyahu, despite opposing a Palestinian state alongside Israel all his political life, could somehow be persuaded to accept one to end the war.

Netanyahu’s refusal reflected almost universal distrust of Palestinians inside Israel as well as his own ideology. It also torpedoed an ambitious American peace plan.

President Biden’s “grand bargain” proposed that Israel would receive full diplomatic recognition by Saudi Arabia, the most influential Islamic country, in return for allowing Palestinian independence. The Saudis would be rewarded with a security pact with the US.

The Biden plan fell at the first hurdle. Netanyahu said in February that statehood would be “huge reward” for Hamas. Bezalel Smotrich, one of the ultra-nationalist extremists in his cabinet, said it would be an “existential threat” to Israel.

The Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar, presumed to be alive, somewhere in Gaza had his own illusions. A year ago, he must have hoped that the rest of Iran’s so-called “axis of resistance” would join, with full force, into a war to cripple Israel. He was wrong.

Sinwar kept his plans to attack Israel on 7 October so secret that he took his enemy by surprise. He also surprised some on his own side. Diplomatic sources told the BBC that Sinwar might not even have shared his plans with his own organisation’s exiled political leadership in Qatar. They had notoriously lax security protocols, talking on open lines that could be easily overheard, one source said.

Far from going on the offensive, Iran made it clear it did not want a wider war, as Israel invaded Gaza and President Biden ordered American carrier strike groups to move closer to protect Israel.

Instead, Hassan Nasrallah, and his friend and ally, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, restricted themselves to rocketing Israel’s northern border, which they said would continue until a ceasefire in Gaza. The targets were mostly military, but Israel evacuated more than 60,000 people away from the border. In Lebanon, perhaps twice as many had to flee over the months as Israel hit back.

Hassan Nasrallah, seen here on a placard held by a young man in Beirut, after his death, was key to Iran’s “axis of resistance”

Israel made clear it would not tolerate an indefinite war of attrition with Hezbollah. Even so, the conventional wisdom was that Israel would be deterred by Hezbollah’s formidable fighting record in previous wars and its arsenal of missiles, provided by Iran.

In September, Israel went on the offensive. No one outside the senior ranks of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the Mossad spy agency believed so much damage could be inflicted so quickly on Iran’s most powerful ally.

Israel remotely exploded booby-trapped pagers and radios, destroying Hezbollah’s communications and killing leaders. It launched one of the most intense bombing campaigns in modern warfare. On its first day Israel killed about 600 Lebanese people, including many civilians.

The offensive has blown a big hole in Iran’s belief that its network of allies cemented its strategy to deter and intimidate Israel. The key moment came on 27 September, with the huge air strike on the southern suburbs of Beirut that killed Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah and many of his top lieutenants. Nasrallah was a vital part of Iran’s “axis of resistance”, its informal alliance and defence network of allies and proxies.

Israel broke out of the border war by escalating to a bigger one. If the strategic intention was to force Hezbollah to cease fire and pull back from the border, it failed. The offensive, and invasion of south Lebanon, has not deterred Iran.

Iran seems to have concluded that its open reluctance to risk a wider war was encouraging Israel to push harder. Hitting back was risky, and guaranteed an Israeli response, but for the supreme leader and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, it had become the least bad option.

On Tuesday 1 October, Iran attacked Israel with ballistic missiles.

A repository of trauma

Zohar Shpak is still reliving the Hamas attack on 7 October

Kibbutz Kfar Aza is very close to the wire that was supposed to protect Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip. The kibbutz was a small community, with modest homes on an open-plan campus of lawns and neat gardens. Kfar Aza was one of Hamas’s first targets on 7 October. Sixty-two people from the kibbutz were killed by Hamas. Of the 19 hostages taken from there into Gaza, two were killed by Israeli troops after they escaped from captivity. Five hostages from Kfar Aza are still in Gaza.

The Israeli army took journalists into Kfar Aza on 10 October last year, when it was still a battle zone. We saw Israeli combat troops dug into the fields around the kibbutz and could hear gunfire as they cleared buildings where they suspected Hamas fighters might be sheltering. Israeli civilians killed by Hamas were being carried out in body bags from the ruins of their homes. Hamas fighters killed by Israeli soldiers as they fought their way into the kibbutz still lay on the neat lawns, turning black as they decomposed in the strong Mediterranean sun.

A year later the dead are buried but very little has changed. The living have not returned to live in their homes. Ruined houses have been preserved as they were when I saw them on 10 October last year, except the names and photos of the people who lived and were killed inside them are displayed on big posters and memorials.

Zohar Shpak, a resident who survived the attack with his family, showed us round the homes of neighbours who were not as lucky. One of the houses had a large photo on its wall of the young couple who lived there, both killed by Hamas on 7 October. The ground around the houses has been dug over. Zohar said the young man’s father had spent weeks sifting earth to try to find his son’s head. He had been buried without it.

The stories of the dead of 7 October, and the hostages, are well known in Israel. Local media still talk about their country’s losses, adding new information to old pain.

Posters marking the horror are fading

Zohar said it was too early to think about how they might rebuild their lives.

“We are still inside the trauma. We are not in post-trauma. Like people said, we’re still here. We are still in the war. We wanted the war will be ended, but we want it will be ended with a victory, but not an army victory. Not a war victory.

“My victory is that I could live here, with. My son and daughter, with my grandchildren and living peacefully. I believe in peace.”

Zohar and many other Kfar Aza residents identified with the left wing of Israeli politics, meaning that they believed Israel’s only chance of peace was allowing the Palestinians their independence. Israelis like Zohar and his neighbours are convinced that Netanyahu is a disastrous prime minister who bears a heavy responsibility for leaving them vulnerable and open to attack on 7 October.

But Zohar does not trust the Palestinians, people he used to ferry to hospitals in Israel in better times when they were allowed out of Gaza for medical treatment.

“I don’t believe those people who are living over there. But I want the peace. I want to go to Gaza’s beach. But I don’t trust them. No, I don’t trust any one of them.”

Gaza’s catastrophe

Hamas leaders do not accept that the attacks on Israel were a mistake that brought the wrath of Israel, armed and supported by the United States down on to the heads of their people. Blame the occupation, they say, and its lust for destruction and death.

In Qatar, an hour or so before Iran attacked Israel on 1 October, I interviewed Khalil al-Hayya, the most senior Hamas leader outside Gaza, second only in their organisation to Yahya Sinwar. He denied his men had targeted civilians – despite overwhelming evidence – and justified the attacks by saying it was necessary to put the plight of the Palestinians on the world’s political agenda.

“It was necessary to raise an alarm in the world to tell them that here there is a people who have a cause and have demands that must be met. It was a blow to Israel, the Zionist enemy.”

Israel felt the blow, and on 7 October, as the IDF was rushing troops to the Gaza border, Benjamin Netanyahu made a speech promising a “mighty vengeance”. He set out war aims of eliminating Hamas as a military and political force and bringing the hostages home. The prime minister continues to insist that “total victory” is possible, and that force will in the end free the Israelis held by Hamas for a year.

His political opponents, including relatives of the hostages, accuse him of blocking a ceasefire and a hostage deal to appease ultra-nationalists in his government. He is accused of putting his own political survival before the lives of Israelis.

Many of Gaza’s once-thriving communities are now desolate

Netanyahu has many political enemies in Israel, even though the offensive in Lebanon has helped repair his poll numbers. He remains controversial but for most Israelis the war in Gaza is not. Since 7 October, most Israelis have hardened their hearts to the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza.

Two days into the war, Israel’s Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, said he had ordered a “complete siege” of the Gaza Strip.

“There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed… We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.”

Since then, under international pressure, Israel has been forced to loosen its blockade. At the United Nations at the end of September, Netanyahu insisted Gazans have all the food they need.

Benjamin Netanyahu and Joe Biden in July – Biden’s role, restraining Israel while also supplying weapons, risks dragging the US into a wider war

The evidence shows clearly that is not true. Days before his speech, UN humanitarian agencies signed a declaration just demanding an end to “appalling human suffering and humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza”.

“More than 2 million Palestinians are without protection, food, water, sanitation, shelter, health care, education, electricity and fuel – the basic necessities to survive. Families have been forcibly displaced, time and time again, from one unsafe place to the next, with no way out.”

– Jeremy Bowen : International editor, BBC News

(BBC News)

“A major alliance of Tamil political parties in North-East is expected to be launched by business tycoon Subashkaran Allirajah, chairman, British Lyca Mobile. He is reported to have had discussions with former Jaffna district MP and ITAK President Sritharan Sivagnanam in bringing together fractured and divided Tamil politics together.” Sinhala news report on 02 October, 2024 

Large, new alliances do not mean they are “People centric”. They only mean few new faces at press conferences with the same rickety old political parties sitting in a different arrangement with new nameboards. In the South they remain as racial as anytime before or even more aggressive, if they believe that would draw more votes.

To say the Sinhala South rejected traditional political parties at the 2024 presidential elections is a big lie. The JVP/NPP platform was traditional in form and content. They stand for the 45-year-old “free market economy” and will be adopting the same IMF programme, the most conventional “free market” formula that had been proved a failure. Their politics based on historically dominant Sinhala-Buddhist politics of the SLFP and the UNP, is traditionally racist. They are firm on “Unitary” State, and would not allow even full implementation of 13A.

In Sri Lanka, when the “Voter” is the same politically illiterate voter, with no idea what the vote is for, traditional electoral politics can only change colour, change faces and political slogans to look novel. The SL voter does not want to know the vote is meant to elect a “government with a development programme for the country” and is not for them to elect any particular individual of their fancy.

Traditional politics can only be challenged with a clearly designed programme for the benefit of the People. What is nevertheless seen even in Northern Tamil politics is “urgent” discussions among marginalised “traditional” leaders as in the South, in putting together a “large alliance” with “big money” for campaigning.

North-East leaderships should accept, their major issue is the large credibility gap between them and the People in post-war politics. Political leaders in North-East rarely identified themselves with victimised and agitating People in post-war politics. They were comfortable supporting the 2015 Sirisena-Wickramasinghe “yahapalana” government on anti-Rajapaksa slogans. ITAK as the dominating leadership in the TNA, backed the Wickramasinghe led government on a false belief, they could draft a “new Constitution” as they wish. Living in such illogical assumptions, the ITAK leadership avoided protests and agitations not wanting to make the Wickramasinghe government uncomfortable.  

The result was, between 2015 August and 2020 elections the TNA lost almost 200,000 votes and 06 of the 16 seats they won in 2015. Nearly 30,000 of them voted EPDP. The TNPF increased its total by nearly 50,000 votes electing one MP and another from the National List. TMVP that was not in the previous parliament collected 67,000 plus votes and a MP seat. Wigneswaran’s new TPNA collected over 50,000 votes and a seat from Jaffna district.

What is also important to note is, Ariyanethiran as the Tamil Common Candidate this 2024 presidential elections, though polling a significant 226,000 plus votes backed by 06 political parties, could not top Jaffna district coming second to Southern Sinhala candidate SP and was unable to poll even half of what SP polled in Vanni district. He was 100,000 plus votes less than SP in his own Batticaloa district polling less than 37,000 votes.

This is the tragedy of a Tamil leadership that took over representing the North-East by default, after the LTTE was wiped out in 2009 May. They took People for granted. Yet in a battered and a tattered society, with People compelled to find answers for their immediate and sensitive issues, integrity of leaderships is tested not at elections but on the ground where People agitate for answers.    

Most important lesson the North-East Tamil political leadership should learn from this debacle therefore is, they have to first bridge this credibility gap between them and the still victimised People in N&E. Political credibility does not come with new alliances, new name boards and campaign money. Credibility comes with a programme that address the issues of N&E People. It’s about a people-centric campaign on People’s issues.

A fortnight ago, I proposed a detailed discussion on “1961 Civil Disobedience Campaign” in N&E led by “Thanthai” Chelva and his ITAK, for present generations to learn what “People’s Politics” is. It was a wholly peaceful one moth long protest begun in February 1961 that brought all State departments and institutes in North & East to a complete halt by ordinary People sitting in front of them. On 02 March, when PM Madam Bandaranayake was questioned in the Senate, why the military has to be deployed in North & East, she accepted “There is no government in North-East.”

Having gone through 02 decades of politics by guns and grenades, I doubt present day Tamil politics understand the strength of such People’s participation in politics. It is rather late, but as the saying goes, it is “better late than ever” to bridge the credibility gap between political leadership and the People on a campaign programme that can be the basis of lobbying and pressurising the elected government to address People’s issues, post-elections. It should therefore include the LLRC recommendation of urgently and completely “demilitarising North-East and establishing an independent civil administration”, immediate repeal of the PTA and withdrawal of the proposed Anti-Terrorism Bill, land disputes to be settled through an independent provincial civil committee and to reconstitute the OMP to provide answers within a year to agitating wives and parents on enforced disappearances.

If that is not what Tamil leaders want, People may go for different options that I do not think would be worth discussing here.    

– Kusal Perera

2024 October 02

(kusalperera.blogspot.com)

(Photo : First days of the Civil Disobedience Campaign in February 1961 opposite the Jaffna Kachcheri. courtesy – Ilankai Thamil Sangham)

The PRC’s relationship with Sri Lanka exemplifies its strategic foreign policy, says Mr. Nalin Aponsu, President of the Sri Lanka – China Journalists Forum.

He said this in a special statement issued to mark the 75th founding anniversary of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), which falls today (Oct. 01).

“The PRC’s relationship with Sri Lanka exemplifies its strategic foreign policy. From the early recognition of the PRC to contemporary engagements under the BRI, the partnership has deepened significantly. Major infrastructure projects, such as the Hambantota Port and Colombo Port City, underscore China’s commitment to enhancing global trade routes and regional influence, highlighting the strategic nature of its international relationships,” he added.

The full statement of Mr. Aponsu is as follows :

China’s 75 Years: From Revolution to Global Power
The 75th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) marks a pivotal moment in the country’s dramatic evolution from a struggling agrarian society to a global superpower. This journey has been shaped by visionary leadership and dynamic political philosophies, each contributing to China’s rise on the world stage. From Mao Zedong’s revolutionary foundation to Xi Jinping’s bold “Chinese Dream,” China’s leaders have navigated complex challenges to steer the nation toward unprecedented growth and global influence.

On October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong proclaimed the establishment of the PRC, initiating a new chapter in China’s history. Mao’s leadership, rooted in Marxist-Leninist principles but uniquely adapted to Chinese conditions, aimed to create a socialist state through significant reforms. His emphasis on the revolutionary potential of the peasantry, encapsulated in his belief that “The people, and the people alone, are the motive force in the making of world history,” set the stage for transformative change. Mao’s policies, including land reforms and collectivization, sought to mobilize the rural population for national development, laying the groundwork for future progress.

The transition to Deng Xiaoping’s leadership in 1978 marked a pivotal shift. Deng’s pragmatic approach, epitomized by his famous saying, “It doesn’t matter whether a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice,” prioritized practical results over ideological constraints. Deng’s “Reform and Opening-Up” policies revolutionized China’s economy by introducing market-oriented reforms, decollectivizing agriculture, and welcoming foreign investment. These measures catalyzed an era of rapid economic growth, lifting millions out of poverty and establishing China as a major global economic player. Deng’s concept of “socialism with Chinese characteristics” blended socialist ideals with practical economic strategies, setting a new course for the nation’s development.

Jiang Zemin, Deng’s successor, furthered economic reforms with his “Three Represents” theory, which broadened the Communist Party’s base to include entrepreneurs and intellectuals, recognizing their role in the emerging economy. Jiang’s tenure also saw China’s successful accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, integrating China into the global economy and enhancing its international trade relationships.

Hu Jintao, who followed Jiang, introduced the concept of the “Harmonious Society,” focusing on balancing economic growth with social equity and environmental sustainability. Hu’s emphasis on “scientific development” aimed to ensure that economic progress was accompanied by improvements in quality of life and environmental protection. This approach addressed the complexities of rapid development and worked to create a more balanced and equitable society.

Xi Jinping’s ascension in 2012 ushered in a new era characterized by ambition and assertiveness. Xi’s “Chinese Dream” seeks the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” positioning China as a leading global power. His philosophy, articulated in “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era,” emphasizes the central role of the Communist Party, ideological integrity, and China’s proactive role in global governance. Initiatives like the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) reflect Xi’s strategic vision, aiming to enhance global connectivity and expand China’s influence across continents.

The PRC’s relationship with Sri Lanka exemplifies its strategic foreign policy. From the early recognition of the PRC to contemporary engagements under the BRI, the partnership has deepened significantly. Major infrastructure projects, such as the Hambantota Port and Colombo Port City, underscore China’s commitment to enhancing global trade routes and regional influence, highlighting the strategic nature of its international relationships.

As China celebrates its 75th anniversary, it stands as a testament to transformative leadership and strategic vision. The journey from Mao’s revolutionary vision to Deng’s economic reforms, and from Jiang and Hu’s approaches to globalization and social harmony to Xi’s national rejuvenation, reflects a continuous evolution of thought and policy. China’s rise has reshaped global dynamics, offering a distinct development model and an increasingly influential role in the world. The story of the PRC is one of visionary leadership and dynamic progress, shaping not only China’s destiny but also the broader contours of the 21st-century global landscape.

– Nalin Aponso
President
Sri Lanka – China Journalists Forum