A Sri Lankan example for Israel-Palestine

Like in Israel-Palestine, the issue at hand in Sri Lanka is the peaceful coexistence of two peoples with deep mistrust towards each other.

- JEHAN PERERA

When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it? -Eleanor Roosevelt

The ongoing tragedy taking place in Israel-Palestine is in some crucial ways a rescript of what took place in Sri Lanka more than a decade ago. The same basic features are to be seen-terrorism, unimaginable atrocities, military confrontations on land, sea and air, and in the last phase, a hostage problem of epic proportions when Sri Lankan army encircled the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and 300,000 civilians in the last pocket of resistance. Even as the world watches in anguish and anger the events that unfold in Israel-Palestine, there are lessons to be learnt from Sri Lanka.

For nearly three decades, the LTTE fought the Sri Lankan state to carve out a separate Tamil state in the north and east of the island where the Tamil minority is a majority. The LTTE engaged in suicide killings, not only of military personnel but also of top level politicians, including a president of Sri Lanka at a May Day workers rally and a former prime minister of India at an election rally in India itself. Among their acts of terror, they executed 600 policemen who had surrendered to them on the orders of the government, exploded bombs in crowded civilian places including buses and brought down the country's central bank through a suicide truck attack.