Echoes Of Palestine

 By Harsha Gunasena –

Harsha Gunasena

Imthiaz Bakeer Markar authored a book titled ‘The Heritage of the Homeland Trampled By A Superpower-Palestine’. The book will be launched at an event of Echoes of Palestine to be held at 4 pm on January 13, 2026 at Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute. This book contains a number of his parliamentary speeches delivered from December 1989 to May 2024. He was a speaker constantly spearheaded his pro-Palestine stance whether in the government benches or in the opposition benches.   

The views of the countries of the problems such as atrocities against the Palestinians by the state of Israel is often marred by the security interests of those countries. JR Jayewardene started Israel Interest Section in Sri Lanka in order to get the support of Israel during the civil war against the Tamil militant groups at a time the Western countries did not support the Jayewardene regime. This Interest section was closed by Ranasinghe Premadasa and eventually the diplomatic relations with Israel were restarted during the regime of Chandrika Kumaratunga.

Imthiaz said in his autobiography Mage Kathava that Mahinda Rajapaksa was in support of Palestine over their struggle with Israel over decades and both of them worked together over this issue although they were from different political parties. However, when Mahinda Rajapaksa became the President, the diplomatic relationship with Israel continued and he could not extend the same stance towards the Palestine issue. All this was due to the internal conflict in Sri Lanka where the Israel supported the Sri Lankan government.

Now there is no  civil war in Sri Lanka but the present government in December 2025 signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Israel in order to increase the recruitment of Sri Lankans in Israel, amid the Gaza tensions. The present Sri Lankan government was criticized for allowing Israel visitors in Sri Lanka.

In the 1967 war with Israel almost all the Arab countries supported Egypt, Jordan and Syria who fought against Israel, where Palestine was one of the issues. During the Gaza massacre Egypt and Jordan could not take a large number of Palestine refugees since the intention of Israel was to get rid of the Palestinians from Gaza and occupied West Bank.

The best opportunity to resolve this conflict arose during the time of Yitizhak Rabin and Shimon Peres in 1990s where the Oslo accords were signed. The Oslo accords created limited self -governance in limited areas of Palestine. This was not what Palestinians expected but it started a way to end the conflict. Although the Palestine Liberation Organisation in 1980s accepted the two-state solution proposed by the UN, Hamas rejected the existence of the state of Israel. This is the stance of the Hamas backer, the government of Iran, of which a former President Ahmadinejad rejected the existence of holocaust.

Yitizhak Rabin was resisted by the Israel extremists as well and later he was assassinated ending the process. If Hamas was able to shed its extremist views at that time the history of the conflict would have been different. After the death of Yitizhak Rabin in 1995 Benjamin Netanyahu became the Prime Minister in 1996 defeating Shimon Peres. That was the turning point of the conflict. Netanyahu intensified the Israeli settlements in Palestinian land which was started after the 1967 war and done in a systematic way by Menachem Begin. There is a considerable number of Israeli settlements in occupied territories which is considered illegal by the international bodies including the International Court of Justice.

Opportunities should be taken  at the correct time and leaders of the organisations representing masses should be conscious of the masses they represent. For instance if Prabhakaran accepted a federal solution at the time of peace talks the fate of the Tamils in Sri Lanka today would be different. Hamas moved forward and committed violence against innocent Israeli civilians which was the starting point of the Gaza war and the act of Hamas should be condemned.

This does not justify the atrocities committed against the Palestinians today. In one of his speeches far back in 1989 Imthiaz said “Our opposition must be directed against this unjust expansionism which is driving the Palestinian people out of their motherland, not against the Israeli people but against the unjust regime” This should have been the stance taken by the extremists in the Palestine side.

In 2023 he said “We are seeing behaviours that obstruct and weaken multilateral systems like the Human Rights Commission, the International Court of Justice, UNCTAD and UNESCO which were established to prevent wars, resolve conflicts, maintain peace and stability in the world, and enable small countries to achieve economic justice” Now under the Trump administration the existence of United Nations  is questioned and undermined. Israel commits its atrocities under the cover of the USA, the super power mentioned in the book of Imthiaz. In Sri Lanka when the President was fully immune his henchmen took the advantage of his power.

Recently the UK, Canada, Australia and France recognized Palestine as a State. So far the major countries which do not recognize Palestine are the United States, Germany, Japan, Italy and South Korea. Presently Palestine is a non-member observer state under the UN system. Peaceful co-existence which is the basis of two nation solution adapted by the UN should be the  future of Israel and Palestine.

Published in Colombo Telegraph on January 13, 2026

https://www.colombotelegraph.com/index.php/echoes-of-palestine/