14 October 2023 03:00 am Views - 308
Speaking at the Galle Dialogue on 12 October 2023, President Wickremesinghe spoke on the new emerging order. What he questioned, is the new emerging order, after the Hamas attack on Israel.
He pointed out politically Israel has formed a new unity government. Defeating Hamas via military action he pointed out is one issue. He then added a rider to what happens if there is an attempt to destroy Gaza. If Gaza is destroyed he prophesized, the whole situation changes dramatically and within 24 hours.
There will be nothing he said, governments can do to control it any longer. The unity government in Israel want to strike back. But if they go into Gaza and try to destroy it the whole Middle East will go up in flames and affect all of us from Turkey to Indonesia, to Central Asia.
President Wickremesinghe was spot on.
Israel occupies 78 percent of the State of Palestine. Only 22 percent -the West Bank and the Gaza Strip- are nominally governed by Palestinians.
Even in these two slivers of territory, Israel controls all checkpoints in and out of the territory. It controls the transport of goods, medicines, and power and even controls the amount of drinking water residents of Gaza receive.
To make matters worse Israel has set up Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
By January 2023, there were 144 Israeli settlements in the West Bank, including 12 in East Jerusalem. In addition, there are over 100 Israeli illegal outposts. According to the Human Rights Council presently there are 700,000 settlers living illegally in in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
The report adds, that during the past decade, the United Nations had verified 3,372 violent incidents by settlers, injuring 1,222 Palestinians.
Frustrated by seventy-five years of Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands Hamas struck.
Today the dilemma[Ma1] Mr Wickremesinghe spoke of is on the verge of becoming reality. Early last morning the Israeli military ordered over 1 million Gazan people to leave their homes in the Gaza City within 24 hours.
The UN has warned such a mass relocation
is impossible.
The question therefore is will the Middle East go up in flames as Mr Wickremesinghe feared, and how will the fallout affect the rest of the world?
Amid this sad discourse though, a small candle of light is flickering. Up to this time the media -controlled by the West- painted a one-sided picture of events taking place on the ground.
Today thanks to social media and especially to ‘X’ (Formerly Twitter), almost immediately fake news presented via the mainstream media is
being contradicted.
A good example of this is was US President -Joe Biden- forced to retract a particular statement he made regarding pictures he claimed to have seen -babies beheaded by Hamas militants.
Similarly, a French journalist has also been forced to contradict her report of having seen hundreds of corpses of Hamas civilian victims strewn along the roads.
Social media reports have also contradicted reports of Hamas militants cold-bloodedly killing youthful participants at a music festival.
Separately, Bloomberg warns, amid uncertainty over whether the conflict will spread to other nations, oil could reach $100 a barrel.
How will the rises in oil prices affect our people still reeling under the effects of our
recent bankruptcy?
Salaries have not been raised since the Covid-19 pandemic of 2019. A number of small and medium enterprises were forced into closure, as were construction and road development projects which resulted in hundreds of thousands losing
their employment.
According to the World Food Programme An estimated 17 percent of its 22 million population is food-insecure 17 percent of our population is facing moderate acute food insecurity. Thirty-one percent of children under five years are malnourished and 20 percent of children under 5 years suffer
from wasting.
The President and his team will now have to look into ways and means to protect these innocents from the worst effects of a possible fallout.