By going to Israel, the President rallied for the Palestinian cause

By Rajpal Abeynayake

Those who are conducting a campaign to say that the President's tour of Israel was insensitive to Muslims, even as he received the Star of Palestine, the highest honour that can be received by a non-citizen from the Palestinian state, obviously want the people to be given facts on zero sum terms.

They say -- for their own petty partisan reasons of course -- that the zero sum outcome of the state visit to Israel is a slight to the Muslims, especially Sri Lankan Muslims, and a repudiation of the Palestinian cause.

Nothing however could be further from this zero-sum ‘truth'.The President's ties with the Palestinian nation and her people have never been better, and it is an insult to the astute leader Mr Abbas and the government of the Palestinian people to infer that they welcomed the President of Sri Lanka and decorated him with the Star of Palestine accolade, knowing that he has turned his back on the longstanding solidarity he has shown with the Palestinian struggle!

The Palestinians, and by extension the Muslim people of the world who hold the Palestinian cause dear to their hearts, know and trust the President, which is why they not only extended him a statesman's welcome to their nation, but also bestowed on him their highest honour from the hand of the Palestinian President.

This obvious reality has not stopped the mischievous -- or the outright cussed -- from hanging on to the Israel visit to say that the President has turned his back on the Palestinian cause and by extension, also repudiated the local Muslims.

Normally this kind of political sharp practice would not have merited any kind of repartee, but what is diabolical about this trumped up narrative is that its creators are attempting to couple it with the canard that there is and has been state sponsored harassment of Muslims in Sri Lanka, which they say is the other piece in the jigsaw which completes the picture with regard to the President's repudiation of the Muslims now, and with that, the Palestinian cause.

Apart from the cheap shots about the attacks on Muslims which seek to string together a few unfortunate incidents to portray the President and his government as Muslim baiting, which does not even merit a rebuttal, the fallacy of this argument that has to be pointed out emphatically, is in the assumption that being a friend of Israel is qualification for being an enemy of Palestine!

This has to be the most pathetic variety of balderdash particularly since the President of Palestine and the Palestinian people do not think so, but more importantly because the President is better off being a friend of Israel, if he genuinely wants to help the Palestinian cause.

The President obviously can and will use his good offices to ensure that the longstanding grievances of the Palestinian people are addressed on the Israeli side.

This is more important and more productive to the Palestinian cause than so called friends that shut out the Israelis completely from a standpoint of cosmetic yet dogmatic ‘principle.’

Perhaps the Palestinians knew that the agency of a true trusted and tried friend is important to them at this juncture which is why the President was given an extraordinarily spectacular welcome in Palestine that was replete with celebrations of a particularly fraternal nature, apart from the official meetings.

Though the President of Sri Lanka was not playing official honest broker between the two governments of these two rather tenuously relating states, he was able to convey the Palestinian government's current positions on the key issues of the Middle East to the Israeli people on his visit last week.

This is far more than what a mere cosmetic comrade can do for the Palestinian people. The President has too long a history of solidarity with the Palestinian people to be one more fair weather friend. The modus vivendi of the President's diplomacy in the Middle East in fact could be to facilitate just the kind of effort on behalf of the Palestinian cause that the President has a always been known to mount.

The President's Middle Eastern diplomacy then, far from being a departure from his policy on Palestine in fact in this context probably marks what is probably a new beginning in which he is an even more useful friend to the Palestinian people than he always was.

His policy on Palestine is so pivotal to his Middle Eastern diplomacy that he is looked at by Israel also as a friend of Palestine, and that is the one capacity that they will not ignore about him whenever he visits Israel as Sri Lanka's President.

If at all then it is ludicrous that this new exciting and productive dynamic in the President's relations with the Palestinian people is being interpreted as a volte face in his approach to the Palestinian cause.

However it can be said that there is a very apparent method to this madness of making a white is black transposed narrative out of the President's runaway success in his Middle Eastern policy - which is, to repeat, marked by a new dynamic in his always superlative relations with the long struggling Palestinian people.

First there was the attempt to drive a wedge between the President and the Sri Lankan Muslim community and essentially when that failed the President's visit to Israel was sought as a new frontier in damning the President's name vis a vis the Muslims.

The problem was that the President did not visit Israel in isolation, and the welcome in Palestine fairly flummoxed everybody that was determined to see the end of the road for the President's excellent relations withe Muslims in Sri Lanka, and outside.

True friends do not work in isolation, and the Palestinian President probably drew comfort from the fact that President Rajapaksa could walk across the border and speak up for the Palestinian cause which he knows more intimately about than probably any single world leader who has not been a direct honest broker mediating Israeli Palestinian peace efforts.

Was the Palestinian President the happiest interlocutor when President Rajapaksa visited Israel immediately after a visit to his country? It will provably be very correct to say that he was.

Other than to demonize Israel, those who say that President Rajapaksa went back on his longtime Palestinian policy have offered no good reason to say that his Israel visit is damaging to his relations with Muslims in Sri Lanka and worldwide.

In fact the best indication that Sri Lanka is a true friend and not any other kind of strategic ally of Israel is the very fact that President Rajapaksa coupled the Israeli and Palestinian visits pointedly as part of his Middle Eastern tour, and this seems to have got the goat of so many who want to see not just the Rajapaksa foreign policy, but also the Rajapaksa government in shambles.