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)

“I thought I’d spend my whole life here, fighting a corrupt government – but the younger generation did something.”

Samadhi Paramitha Brahmananayake is looking at the field where she spent months camped out with thousands of other demonstrators in Sri Lanka’s capital in 2022.

She can’t quite believe that luscious green grass has replaced the hundreds of protester tents that filled the field opposite the presidential secretariat.

“I feel we’re now more energetic, more powerful,” says Ms Brahmananayake, a 33-year-old banker based in Colombo.

Samadhi Paramitha Brahmananayake, standing in the former tent field, feels people have power in their hands now

Two years ago, huge crowds forced the country’s deeply unpopular leader from office – now voters are just days away from choosing who they want for president.

It’s the first election since the mass protests – called the “aragalaya”, Sinhalese for struggle – which were sparked by Sri Lanka’s worst economic crisis. Inflation was at 70%. Basics like food, cooking gas and medicine were scarce.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the president at the time, and his government were blamed for the mess. He fled the country just before crowds stormed his residence. Euphoric protesters leapt into the presidential pool, taking victory laps.

Sri Lanka crisis: Protesters swim in president’s pool

Mithun Jayawardana, 28, was one of those swimmers. “It was awesome,” he said thinking back. Jobless, with no gas or electricity at home, he says he joined the aragalaya for a lark.

Today, he recognises how crucial the elections on Saturday are: “We need a president who is elected by the people. The people didn’t elect the current president.”

Ranil Wickremesinghe, the man who currently holds the job, was appointed to the position after Gotabaya Rajapaksa resigned. Mr Wickremesinghe, who’s been tasked with steering Sri Lanka through a period of painful economic reform, is running for re-election as an independent.

He’s stood for president twice before but never succeeded, and his political future appears uncertain.

Demonstrators ran the protest camp for months – eating, sleeping and playing – until the government fell

Many associate Wickremesinghe with the Rajapaksas, a political dynasty who have dominated Sri Lankan politics for decades. Many blame them for the years of financial mismanagement that led to Sri Lanka’s economic woes.

Even the country’s top court ruled that Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his brother Mahinda, another former president, were among 13 former leaders responsible for the financial crisis.

Despite the political baggage that comes with the name, a Rajapaksa has entered the political fray in these elections – there are still places the family enjoys a lot of support.

One such district is just over an hour outside Colombo. Music, fireworks and the cheers of supporters greeted Namal Rajapaksa as he approached the podium to address the hundreds that had come to hear him speak on Monday in the town of Minuwangoda. Even his father, Mahinda joined him on stage.

Namal Rajapaksa denied his family’s role in Sri Lanka’s economic collapse.

“We know our hands are clean, we know we have not done anything wrong to the people or this country,” he told the BBC.

“We are willing to face the people, let the public decide what they want and who to vote for.”

Namal Rajapaksa (far left) and his father (centre) at a rally near Colombo – they reject the accusations against the family

In all, a record 38 candidates are contesting the 21 September election, none of them women. In 2019, Sajid Premadasa, leader of the country’s main opposition party, won 42% of the popular vote, losing to Gotabaya Rajapaksa. This time around he is thought to be in with a chance too.

For people looking for change, many are looking to Anura Kumara Dissanayake. The candidate of the leftist National People’s Party alliance has emerged as an unlikely frontrunner.

Thousands of people flocked to a field in the small town of Mirigama, two hours north-west from Colombo, to hear Mr Dissanayake speak last Saturday, many wearing bright pink hats or T-shirts with his face.

“Yes 100% sure, okay,” he tells the BBC, when asked if he can win. Campaigning as the voice of the working class, he is hoping to disrupt Sri Lanka’s political establishment.

“Taxes are so high, we can’t manage,” says Rangika

Unlike past elections in Sri Lanka, the economy is front and centre in this one.

Holding her four-year-old son Nehan, Rangika Munasinghe laments the higher taxes she now pays.

“It’s very difficult. Salaries are being reduced, taxes on products and food are high. Kids meals, milk powder, all more expensive. Taxes are so high, we can’t manage it,” the 35-year-old told the BBC at a busy market in Colombo.

Sri Lanka was able to stave off bankruptcy in 2022 thanks to loans from the International Monetary Fund, and countries like China and India. But now everyone is feeling the pressure from the country’s enormous $92bn (£69bn) debt burden, which includes both foreign and national debt.

“I’m doing two jobs,” says Mohamed Rajabdeen, who’s in his 70s. He is selling spoons from a stall off a busy street. Once this is done, he will travel to his second job, working in security.

“We should get good salaries, university students should get jobs, and people should be able to live in peace and harmony. We expect our government to fulfil all of that.”

Activist Melani Gunathilaka says there has been a big change in society

Being that vocal about their expectations from elected officials is something new for many people in Sri Lanka. That change has been brought about by the protest movement, says Buwanaka Perera, a youth political activist.

“People are more gutsy in confronting the state or in confronting what’s wrong,” the 28-year-old said. “It’s not just the state, it’s trickled down to everyday things – it can be in your household, it can be in your streets. To make a stand to voice out and to look out for one another.”

Ms Brahmananayake agrees, calling it a lasting impact of her efforts and the thousands of others who participated in the uprising two years ago.

“People are talking about politics now. They are asking questions. I think people have the power in their hands. They can vote.”

Like her, climate and political activist Melani Gunathilaka, 37, knows the path forward will not be easy for Sri Lanka, but they have hope.

“There hasn’t been a change in the political and economic culture – but there has been a massive change in terms of society,” she says.

“For the first time people took charge, people exercised their democratic rights to do what’s right for the country.”

Who are the main candidates?

Ranil Wickremesinghe, a six-time former prime minister, was appointed president after Gotabaya Rajapaksa was ousted in 2022.

The 75-year-old, who faced the monumental task of trying to lead Sri Lanka out of economic collapse, has been accused of protecting the Rajapaksa family, allowing them to regroup, while shielding them from prosecution – allegations he has denied.

Anura Kumara Dissanayake is the candidate of the leftist National People’s Party alliance.

His promises of tough anti-corruption measures and good governance have boosted his candidacy, positioning the 55-year-old as a serious contender.

Sajith Premadasa, the runner-up last time, is the leader of the country’s main opposition Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB).

Earlier this week, he told news agency AP that he would ensure that the rich would pay more taxes and the poor would see their conditions improve if he won.

Namal Rajapaksa comes from a powerful political clan that produced two presidents.

The 38-year-old’s campaign has centred around the legacy of his father, who is still seen as a hero by some Sri Lankans for presiding over the bloody end to the civil war against Tamil Tiger rebels. But he needs to win over voters who blame the Rajapaksas for the economic crisis.

– Samira Hussain

(BBC News)