Mapping Israeli sovereignty, Jewish-settlements, and a future Palestinian state

 July 1 has come and gone, and despite the hysteria in some circles, the world did not wake up this past Wednesday to find that Israel had become sovereign over large parts of Palestinian land. So what was all the hoopla about, and what lies ahead?

Let’s start with a basic question: what exactly was supposed to happen on July 1?

The short answer is: Not much. July 1 was the earliest date for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to present to his government a plan for the annexation of parts of the West Bank. What that plan will be, and if and how it will be implemented is still being negotiated.

If there is no clear plan, why is Netanyahu even talking about annexation at this time?

Annexing some parts of the West Bank has been one of Netanyahu’s electoral promises. But given the Prime Minister’s generally cautious approach to the conflict overall (usually preferring to just keep the peace and not push for radical changes to the status quo), a unilateral annexation of this sort, done without Palestinian input, was considered to be a fringe idea. However, after US President Donald Trump’s Israel-Palestine peace plan was unveiled earlier this year, the possibility of such an annexation quickly moved up the agenda.

A key element of the Trump plan is that it does not envisage any transfer of population. No Israeli or Palestinian will be uprooted from their homes. This is specifically in reference to Israel’s Jewish citizens who live in the West Bank, or more specifically, in settlements across the 1949 Armistice Line. Although they live under Israeli law for all practical purposes, these residents of the West Bank would like to be part of ‘Israel-proper’ -- and the Trump plan offers them a rare opportunity for just that.

But why do Israeli Jews want to live in a disputed territory with the Palestinians? Is this even legal?

Israeli Jews live in the West Bank for many reasons. The earliest settlements, established right after the 1967 war, were built for strategic purposes--to create a security buffer. But as Israel continued to control the ancient Biblical hills of Judea and Samaria, ideologically motivated Jews who believed that this was their ancestral land also began to move to the region, starting with Hebron, the second holiest city in Judaism. Finally, today, there are many secular Jews who live in the West Bank simply because it’s cheaper.

The legality question is more complicated, and the answer depends on who exactly you ask. The international community considers as illegal all Israeli settlements located to the west of the 1949 Armistice Line (also known as the Green Line), built on land captured by Israel during the 1967 war. This is premised on the Fourth Geneva Convention which deals with the protection of civilians in war-time and also lays down the rights and duties of an occupying power. Specifically, an occupying power is prohibited from transferring its own population to the occupied areas. It is also not allowed to grab private land from the occupied population. Finally, while the occupying power may administer the occupied territory, it does not become the sovereign in that territory unless there is a negotiated settlement with the previous sovereign.

Israel’s argument here is that it cannot be labelled as an occupying power in the West Bank because the region did not have a sovereign at all when Israel took control. The last official sovereign of the West Bank was, in fact, the Ottoman Empire. After the First World War, the Ottomans signed over their entire Empire to the Allied Powers. The British took control of the West Bank (and Israel), established a Mandate, but didn’t claim sovereignty (unlike in the Indian subcontinent) in the region. After the British withdrew in 1948, Jordan took control and officially annexed the West Bank (and East Jerusalem including the Old City) in 1950. But this annexation was not recognised by the international community. Therefore, in 1967, when Israel took over the West Bank, the area had no official sovereign. Moreover, in 1988, even Jordan officially relinquished all its claims to the West Bank, and recognised the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as the sole representative (but still not the sovereign) of the Palestinian people.

This brings us back full circle to the Israeli argument that it is not an occupying force in the West Bank because it did not take the territory from another state. But that’s not all. Israel still applies the laws of the Belligerent Occupation to the region. This guarantees Palestinian residents certain rights and protections under international law, but it complicates Israel’s own position in the region. It also means that Israel’s Jewish citizen settlers in the West Bank live, technically, under military rule. Annexation will bring them under civilian rule in ‘Israel-proper’.

Will annexation not bring the West Bank’s Palestinian residents under Israeli rule as well? Will they then become Israeli citizens?

This is where the concept of applying Israeli civilian law, without officially calling it an annexation, comes into play. To understand what exactly this looks like, we go back to the 1967 war. As mentioned earlier, during this war Israel took control of the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan. It also took the Golan Heights from Syria, and the Gaza strip and the Sinai desert from Egypt. While Israel eventually returned the Sinai to Egypt after signing a peace treaty in 1979, and unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005, it has retained control over the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and Syria’s Golan Heights.

In 1980, Israel unilaterally applied Israeli law to the Golan Heights and to East Jerusalem (but not to the West Bank). It did not claim to officially annex and, therefore, impose sovereignty in these areas. Instead, it only revoked Israeli military law which had been in effect in these occupied areas, and applied Israeli civilian law--ostensibly for administrative convenience. This was essentially a roundabout way for Israel to get to the point of annexation, but without actually doing so.

It also allowed Israel some benefits. First, it kept the door open for another Sinai-style land-for-peace deal (especially vis-a-vis Syria) in the future. Second, it allowed Israel at the same time to steadily integrate the occupied regions into the Israeli state. This would help create new Israel-friendly ‘facts on the ground’, which could be leveraged during potential peace talks. Third, the mere application of Israeli law without the application of sovereignty also meant that the Arabs living in these regions, who were Jordanian and Syrian citizens, were not by default immediately converted into Israeli citizens with voting rights--which would have jeopardised Israel’s Jewish democratic character.

Instead, Israel offered the Arabs in these areas permanent residency (which meant Israeli work permits, access to Israel’s social security system, the right to vote in municipal elections etc.), and a path to citizenship. In the early years, few took up the offer of Israeli citizenship. In the Golan, for example, there was a general expectation that the area would eventually be returned to Syria. However, as prospects for a negotiated peace with Syria in the near-term become dim, and indeed the Syrian state itself is in ruins today, an increasing number of younger Arabs of Syrian descent, many of whom have never known a life in Syria, are applying for Israeli citizenship.

In East Jerusalem, where the facts on the ground seem less settled and the conflict still simmers just under the surface, there is greater reluctance on both sides to walk the path of citizenship although perceptions are changing on both sides. East Jerusalemites also have the right to vote and contest in municipal elections (but they usually don’t, so as not to legitimise Israeli rule). Either way, Israel’s approach to the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem offer some insight into what exactly annexation, or more specifically, the extension of Israeli law to the West Bank could look like: civilian rule for Israel’s Jewish settler-citizens and permanent Israeli residency for Palestinian Arabs with some sort of pathway to Israeli citizenship

But why would Israel want to take on the responsibility of providing for tens of thousands of understandably hostile Palestinians?

Currently, there are about 4,60,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank (not including the 3,00,000 Israelis living in the already annexed neighbourhoods of East Jerusalem), and about 2.1 million Palestinians. They live next to each other but not together. The overwhelming majority of Israeli settlers are concentrated in about three percent of the West Bank area (and only half of this is actually built-up area), in settlements hugging the 1967 line. For example, one of the biggest settlements, the city of Maale Adumim, home to more than 40,000 Israelis, is barely five kilometers outside of Jerusalem. However, there are a few others, like Ariel, home to about 20,000 Israelis that are much deeper inside the West Bank, nearly 16 kms from the Green Line, and surrounded by Palestinian villages. There are also smaller settlement outposts, usually comprised of just a few family homes, which are again deep inside Palestinian territory and were built without Israeli authorisation. As of now, it is unclear which settlements or areas Netanyahu will propose for annexation, but it could be anything between three (just the major settlement blocs along the Green Line) to 30 percent (including almost all Israeli settlements).

Depending on the contours of this plan, Palestinians will be impacted in two ways. The very few living within the annexed settlements will become permanent residents of Israel with full benefits, as explained earlier. Because their numbers are small, they aren’t really a headache for the Israeli government, especially if only the major settlement blocs are annexed. However, if a larger section of land is annexed, then the vast majority of the Palestinians, living right outside and around the settlements, will have to deal with a whole lot more Israeli checkpoints, making everyday life and travel that much harder. They may also effectively lose access to their private properties if located within the annexed settlements. Finally, their hopes of having a territorially contiguous state will be shattered.

If annexation will kill a two-state solution, how will it impact the Israeli-Palestinian peace process?

Annexation will only radically change the contours of a future Palestinian state if Israel goes all out and extends sovereignty to all the settlements. But this is unlikely. Annexation doesn’t really bring, even to Israel, a lot of concrete benefits when compared to the price that it will have to pay in terms of its reputation, trade sanctions from the EU, difficulties in normalising relations with Arab countries etc.

In a best case scenario, annexation strengthens the ideological argument for Israel having sovereignty in Judea and Samaria, and offers to some West Bank settlers the tag of official Israeli sovereignty. But most settlers already live under Israeli law for all practical purposes. In fact, extending Israeli sovereignty to the West Bank might actually make it harder to acquire land, especially private Palestinian land, for new settlements; and if the annexation is part of a negotiated peace plan then there will most certainly be a moratorium on new construction for some time. Similarly, from a strictly security perspective, extending Israeli civil law might actually weaken the Israeli Defence Forces’ ability to function in the Territories, empowering instead the police who have nowhere nearly the same powers as the military. Finally, of course, Israel unilaterally extending sovereignty to the West Bank won’t change international opinion on the issue. Most of the world will still see the territories as illegally occupied by Israel, just as it does with the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem.

So, the entire debate about annexation seems to be a bit of a damp squib at the moment. But that’s because it is being framed as debates over land, and self-determination, and sovereignty. Look at it instead as a negotiating tool in the larger peace process, and it makes much more sense. Irrespective of if, what and how much land Israel annexes in the West Bank, the fact that the US has supported this previously-untouchable idea creates pressure for both the Israeli and the Palestinian leadership to come to the negotiating table.

Israel’s settler communities see this as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take control of their ancestral lands--and they will push Netanyahu to at least work on Trump’s plan. As for the Palestinians, the deal calls out the bluff of the leadership in Ramallah who have done nothing but extend an already protracted conflict even as the common people continue to suffer.

Half a million settlers will not just walk away from their homes and communities. And neither will seven million people of Palestinian-origin be allowed to return to their ancestral homes in Israel, whose total population is about nine million. And Jerusalem will remain under Israeli control. Sure, the Trump Plan is maximalist but it is clear-eyed about the facts on the ground and has no qualms in saying them out loud.

The Trump Plan offers the Palestinian leadership another chance at having their own state, and a lot of money to build that state. Of course, the plan also lists a whole host of terms and conditions that they need to abide by that they were not consulted about, and of course, they have rejected the plan (for being one-sided, and rightly so). But at the very least, if the very real possibility of Israeli sovereignty being extended to the West Bank compels both parties to begin serious negotiations, then that in itself might be worth it.

What is India’s position on this issue?

Like the rest of the world, India considers Israeli rule in the Golan, and in East Jerusalem as illegal, and sees Israel as an occupying force in the West Bank. On the current issue of Israel possibly extending sovereignty to parts of the West Bank, the Ministry of External Affairs said on July 2 that India’s view is that: “Final status issues should be resolved through direct negotiations between the two Parties”. And that both Parties should “engage with each other and find an acceptable two-State solution for peaceful coexistence”. This is in keeping with what New Delhi had said in January 2020 when the political section of the Trump Plan was released. At the time, the Government had also specifically urged both Parties to engage with each other on the “recent proposals put forward by the United States”.

Generally speaking, India’s view on the Israel-Palestine issue as a whole is that “a two-state solution should be pursued to achieve a comprehensive, just and lasting settlement of the Palestinian issue through negotiation based on the relevant UN resolutions, the principle of "land for peace”, the Arab peace initiative and pre-existing agreements between Israel and Palestine, leading to the establishment of a sovereign, independent and united State of Palestine coexisting peacefully with the State of Israel.” This position was last reiterated in February 2019 at the Russia-India-China foreign ministers’ meet in Zhejiang.

Putting together the above points, it is interesting to note that India has neither criticised the Trump Plan nor has it condemned the Netanyahu government for its annexation proposals. This is exactly as it should be. It shows that New Delhi is realistic, both about the ground realities of the conflict as well as its own position (or lack thereof) in shaping the contours of the conflict resolution process. India does not recognise Israeli sovereignty beyond the 1967 borders in keeping with the majority interpretation of international law in this context, and that’s fine. But there is no reason why it should now stick its neck out and unnecessarily hassle one of its closest strategic partners, for no concrete gains whatsoever.

There is not even a moral argument to be made here, framed in terms of India’s consistent support of the Palestinian cause. The official extension of Israeli sovereignty to the West Bank--especially if it’s only the major settlement blocs--will not radically change anything on the ground. Moreover, the basic administrative arrangement--wherein the Palestinian Authority manages Area A (home to the vast majority if Palestinians), Israel controls Area C (home to most Israeli settlers), and the two share management of Area B--will still remain in place. Finally, if the possibility of annexation, taboo as it may be in certain circles, can re-jig the status quo, then it’s worth a shot.

Either way, when it comes to diplomacy and conflict resolution, it is best not tie oneself down to old shibboleths, to keep all options open, and be realistic. India does not have a frontline role to play in this conflict, but as a mature member of the world polity, it can do its bit by leading through example. For instance, after at least a decade of explicitly calling for a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem, India (as well as China and Russia) has dropped the reference in the past few years. This isn’t recognition of Israeli sovereignty in East Jerusalem as much as it is an acknowledgement of ground realities.

(This article was published by the Vivekananda International Foundation on July 8, 2020)

Refugees, not settlements, are the bigger impediment to Israeli-Palestinian peace

 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent comments that his new government, with support from the Trump Administration in the US will annex parts of the West Bank have, as expected, caused quite a flutter in the international community. Many have condemned the move, while members of the European Union, one of Israel’s most important trading partners, have warned against any such unilateral move. Within Israel, Netanyahu’s plans enjoy greater support from the public, but here too civil society and the national security community have expressed their reservations. Their main argument is that annexation will drown the last remaining vestiges of the two-state solution, and with that any negotiated settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that could allow both Jews and Arabs to coexist peacefully within their own secure borders.

Herein, Netanyahu’s critics are correct. Unilateral Israeli annexation of most or all Jewish settlements in the West Bank will make a future Palestinian state with territorial congruity nearly impossible. Additionally, it will also entangle the Jewish and Arab populations in a manner that will threaten Israel’s existence as a Jewish-majority, democratic state. But while each of these arguments is valid, they are still anchored to the premise that a state for Palestinians is the key to peace between the peoples.

‘Westplaining’ Palestinian Statehood

This premise is problematic because Palestinians have, in fact, repeatedly rejected offers for statehood. Instead, they have made it amply clear that what they want, more than sovereignty, is the undiluted right to return for all those defined as Palestinian refugees. This argument is succinctly laid out by Israeli journalist Adi Schwartz and former Knesset Member Einat Wilf in their book, the War of Return. Published in Hebrew in 2018, the book has recently been translated into English, and shines the spotlight on this important issue. The right to return is in fact one of the most important drivers (alongside the status of Jerusalem) for the Palestinian struggle. To write it off as cheap rhetoric or just a bargaining chip for the Palestinian side, as Western interlocutors often do, is what Schwartz and Wilf describe as ‘Westplaining’.

Therefore to understand the actual roots of the conflict, one must go back to the 1947-49 war--when tens of thousands of Arabs were first displaced from their homes, upon the establishment of the State of Israel. This article is a deep dive into the first of the Arab-Israeli wars.

The First Arab-Israeli War (1947-49)

The 1947-49 war had two distinct phases. The first phase started on November 30, 1947, the day after the UN General Assembly passed the plan to partition British-held Mandatory Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state. The plan was accepted by the former, rejected by the latter, and immediately sparked a guerrilla war in the region. This phase continued till May 14, 1948, when British forces officially withdrew from Palestine. The next day, Prime Minister Ben Gurion announced the establishment of the State of Israel. Immediately afterwards, six Arab armies launched a full frontal attack on the new state, thereby marking the beginning of the second phase of the war. This war ended in July 1949 when Israel militarily defeated its Arab opponents and an armistice agreement was signed.

The Situation in Mandatory Palestine on the Eve of the War

The Arabs were the majority in the region but there were Jewish Yishuv who had strongholds in places such as Tel Aviv-Yaffo and along the coastal plains, Tiberias, the eastern Galilee, and the Jezreel Valley. In fact, contrary to popular perception that Jews only came to Israel after the Holocaust, there were in fact many old Jewish communities that had lived in the area for a much longer time.

The oldest among them can be traced through the Ottoman era, right back up to the 13th century. In fact, on the eve of the arrival of the Zionist Jews, i.e. those who would be emigrating to Palestine with the distinct aim of re-establishing a modern Jewish state in the ancient land of Eretz Yisrael, there was already a modest but longstanding Jewish presence in the region, estimated at 13,000 to 20,000, while Muslims in the region were estimated at around 4, 00,000. Between 1881 and 1947/48, there were six waves of Jewish Zionist immigration (called Aliyah) to Palestine. These immigrants along with the older residents comprised the Yishuv, the pre-state Jewish community in Palestine. Initially, the Arab population was mostly indifferent to Jewish immigration, but as the numbers grew and the newer immigrants became more assertive, relations frayed and often turned violent.

On the day that the UN General Assembly passed the partition plan, the Jewish population of Mandatory Palestine was estimated at around 6,50,000 while Arab Muslims were nearly double that number at about 1.3 million. The region was already a tinderbox, and hostilities broke out in less than 24 hours. On the morning of November 30, Arabs ambushed a bus in Kfar Syrkin in central Israel and killed five Jews. Two more were killed aboard a second bus, and a third near the Tel Aviv-Yafo border.

The Jewish Yishuv was defended by its own militia, primarily, the Hagannah (which eventually became the Israel Defence Forces), it’s elite strike force the Palmach, as well as by more militant, off-shoot groups, such as the Irgun and Lehi, which often used terror tactics to achieve their goals. On the Arab side, the main fighting force was the Arab Liberation Army which was set up by the Arab League, based out of Damascus, and manned mostly by volunteers from the neighbouring Arab states. The ALA was led by Fawzi al-Qawuqji and operated mostly in north Palestine. There were also several smaller local militias such as the one led by Qawuqji’s rival Abd al-Qadir al-Husseini and his deputy who operated in the hills of Jerusalem and Ramallah.

Also in the fray were the British Army and police, but only nominally so. Till May 1948, Palestine was still technically under British rule, but British soldiers and police officers usually took a mixed approach to the conflict. On some occasions, they provided protection to Jewish convoys and outposts; on others, they chose not to intervene even as violent mobs went on the rampage; and in yet other cases, they sided with the Arabs.

War Begins -- Initial Arab Victories

In the early months of the conflict, the Arabs were definitely on the winning side. They were initiating the attacks and had been able to inflict heavy losses by targeting Jewish convoys and blocking key arterial roads that connected otherwise-isolated Jewish settlements. In fact, the Arabs had even successfully cut off the supply lines to the Jewish part of Jerusalem. Initially, the Hagannah’s response was defensive but included retaliatory attacks. Soon enough though, these attacks were expanded to become a much wider terror campaign by the end of 1947, to which the Irgun and Lehi contributed significantly.

But the terror campaign brought only limited dividends. The Arabs still controlled the arterial roads and Jewish settlements were under siege. The British were preparing to leave and were much less inclined to protect Jewish convoys. Even reaching Jerusalem was becoming difficult. Meanwhile, the international community had begun considering whether to postpone partition and bring all of Palestine under UN trusteeship. As the Yishuv saw it, their hard won state was slipping through their fingers. So, in April 1948, the Hagganah, which by then had reorganised itself to form the Israeli Defence Forces, changed its strategy. It went on the offensive with the clear goal of securing a politically and militarily contiguous Jewish state. This was Tochnit Dalet or Plan D. It had to be completed before the British left and the Arab armies, which had been holding back all these months, inevitably invaded the new state.

The Controversial Plan D

The significance of Plan D in creating the Palestinian refugee crisis has been hotly debated because, as official documents now show, it permitted Jewish soldiers to clear out any local Arab resistance. How exactly this was to be done was usually decided at the local level, but the general consensus in the Yishuv was that the fewer the Arabs, the better it would be--both militarily and politically, as Israel Shahak notes. According to Palestinian historian Khalid Walidi who has worked extensively on the 1947-49 exodus argues that Plan D was, indeed, an expulsion plan; but Israeli historian Benny Morris argues that there was never an official Zionist policy document for Arab expulsion. Both, however, agree that the impending invasion of the Arab armies made the Palestinian exodus a strategic necessity for the Zionists, and this was indeed ultimate result of Plan D (as it unravelled against the backdrop of a host of other geopolitical considerations).

The Exodus of the Palestinians

The exodus began the day the war began. Wealthy Arab families began to leave as soon as hostilities erupted on November 30, 1947. Between December 1947 and March 1948, fearing anarchy and terror on the streets, and worrying about the possibility of living either under Jewish rule or the under the thumb of Arab militias, most rich and middle class Arab families fled from their homes--especially those living in areas that were most certainly going to be part of or close to the Jewish state, such as Haifa, Jaffa and west Jerusalem (which were also the places that saw most of the fighting). Most of them moved from the Jewish coastal plains to neighbouring Arab-majority cities and capitals such as Damascus, Nablus, Amman, Beirut, Gaza and Cairo; hoping that this would only be a temporary arrangement. The flight of the rich also sparked fear among the poor who watched the fighting intensify, even as unemployment soared, supply lines were disrupted, and the British safety-net was lost. An overwhelming sense of economic and social collapse permeated Arab Palestine, compelling even the poor to pack up and move.

There was also an element of psychological warfare that hastened the Palestinian exodus, as both Morris and Khalidi show in their research. Morris describes this as the ‘atrocity factor’ wherein, apart from the terror campaign of the Irgun and the Lehi, a handful of actual Jewish atrocities (such as the Deir Yassin massacre which was so horrific that even the Yishuv leadership condemned it) were amplified by both sides to spook the residents. The Jewish groups did it to accelerate the exodus; while the Arab leadership and media did it to shame their opponents and gain international sympathy.

Indeed, it is often forgotten that while the Yishuv played its part in the Arab exodus, the Palestinian leadership also had a responsibility to protect its people--and failed spectacularly. As Morris shows, the Arab Higher Committee, established by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, offered no concrete guidelines to its people. On some occasions, it actively evacuated entire villages (which was also done by the invading Arab armies from May 1948 onwards), while on other occasions, it opposed the exodus, often asking military-aged males to stay back and fight. Yet it’s own members and their families had already moved out, and the poor were left to their own devices.

The Arab situation worsened as Jewish forces went on the offensive and defeated the ALA and other Palestinian guerilla forces. As Jewish troops took over towns and villages, Arab morale cracked. Morris describes a domino effect in the Arab areas: After Haifa fell, Arabs from surrounding Balad al Sheikh and Hawassa fled; after Jaffa fell, the villages of Salama, Kheiriya and Yazur were abandoned; and after Safed, it was Dhahiriya Tahta, Sammu‘i and Meirun. The IDF may have had an unwritten permission to forcefully expel Arab residents, but the option was sparingly used in the early months of the conflict.

In the latter half of the war, Israeli forces did in fact meet more resistance from Arab civilians; and in such cases, the former also showed much greater willingness to expel residents. This was partly in keeping with the Zionist view the Jewish state would be better off without a large Arab population, as Shahak notes, and but also the result of more immediate strategic military calculation. For example, as Morris explains, the large wave of refugees that fled to Jordan, Lebanon, the Upper Galilee, and the Gaza Strip in July 1948 was the result of IDF operations that were meant to push back Arab forces closing in on Tel Aviv and secure the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem road. Also, these operations were triggered because Arab forces chose not to extend the ceasefire that had been in place through the previous month.

Similarly, the flight of another 2,00,000-2,30,000 Arabs in October-November 1948 was also the direct result of two major IDF operations but neither was designed for that purpose. In the north, Operation Hiram was meant to repel the ALA from the central Galilee; and in the south, Operation Yoav was meant to defeat the Egyptian army and secure the Negev, where more than 20 Jewish settlements lay besieged, and which the international community was already considering awarding to the Palestinians.

The two operations also created two very different sets of footprints. In the north, where the IDF faced a much weaker enemy in the ALA and much less resistance from the local population which included a significant number of Christians and Druze, almost half of the Arab population remained in place in the immediate aftermath of the operation. In the south, however, where the population was almost uniformly Muslim, where the IDF was led by a commander who preferred not to have any Arabs in his area, and where the IDF faced a much more serious enemy and responded with a much heavier hand, almost all the Arab villages were depopulated.

The exodus continued even after the war, as Israel decided to secure its new and still hotly contested border areas. These frontier areas had almost no Jewish settlements and were instead littered with Arab communities whose loyalty to the Jewish state was questionable at best. From a security point of view, they simply had to go. Some were moved to other Israeli Arab villages in the interiors, most others were expelled.

Closing the Doors to Palestinian Return

The scale and swiftness of the Palestinian exodus, as it unravelled though the war, had taken almost everyone by surprise. The talk of return had begun almost immediately after the first wave of refugees fled. But as more people were displaced, and the burden of the refugee crisis in neighbouring countries grew manifold, the international community’s pressure on Israel to take back the Arabs also intensified. Soon enough, the repatriation of the refugees dominated every Arab-Israeli agenda. On Israel’s side, there was a consensus that there was no scope for return, but Ben Gurion’s government couldn’t afford to entirely ignore the international community either.

The Lausanne conference was convened to discuss the matter, but neither party was ready to budge. Israel, especially, having scripted for itself a stellar victory, was satisfied with the status quo. Eventually, under much American pressure, Israel made a small offer to take back 1,00,000 refugees--less than 1/7th of the total refugee population--and, as expected, this was rejected outright as too little, too late.

Either way, by the end of the war, mass repatriation was nearly impossible. Apart from the fact that such a programme would threaten Israel’s still precarious security situation and pull at its Jewish democratic character, there were also hard logistical issues to contend with. Some of the Arab villages had been destroyed; many others had been re-settled with Jewish immigrants who were still pouring in from Europe (after the Holocaust) and from other Arab countries (which had banished their centuries-old Jewish communities to protest the establishment of Israel). The refugees wanted to come home, but by this time, there was no home for them to come back to. To make matters worse, the Arab countries, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians lived in squalid refugee camps had refused to absorb them. Instead, they argued that it was Israel’s responsibility to take them back.

The Refugee Situation Today

As Jalal Al Husseini and Riccardo Bocco show in their 2010 study, by keeping the Palestinians as refugees, the Arab states have ensured the durability of the Right to Return, as enshrined in the UNGA Resolution 194--which, in turn, they have used as a political weapon against Israel. The Palestinians face a similar dilemma with regard to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (commonly known as UNRWA) as well. Registration with the UNRWA is necessary to access UN relief and other benefits, but the tag of a refugee, more than 70 years after the war, is equally undesirable, especially for later-generation refugees born and raised in the Diaspora.

Indeed, this multi-generational extension of refugee status through the UNRWA is also unique to the Palestinians. It emerged in part because, as Ilana Feldman explains, UNRWA was just a relief organisation and its definition of a Palestinian refugee was not designed to delineate the scope of the overall Palestinian loss but only to ascertain who needed the agency’s assistance. What this meant was that some legitimate candidates were not given refugee status because they didn’t need UNRWA assistance; while others who were not technically refugees, such as the children and grandchildren of the original refugees, were eventually registered as such because it would have been inhumane to deny them assistance otherwise. Moreover, as Husseini and Bocco note, today, UNRWA, a unique UN agency that caters only to Palestinians, has become a quasi state of sorts. So even though the agency’s mandate was always about relief, not rights; an UNRWA registration card is seen as a ‘passport to Palestine’ -- which remains at the core of Palestinian political aspirations.

References:

• Al Husseini, J., & Bocco, R. (2009). The status of the Palestinian refugees in the Near East: The right of return and UNRWA in perspective. Refugee Survey Quarterly, 28(2-3), 260-285.
• Feldman, I. (2012). The challenge of categories: UNRWA and the definition of a ‘Palestine refugee’.
• Journal of Refugee Studies, 25(3), 387-406.
• Khalidi, W. (1988). Plan Dalet: Master plan for the conquest of Palestine. Journal of Palestine Studies, 18(1), 4-33.
• Khalidi, W. (2005). Why did the Palestinians leave, revisited. Journal of Palestine Studies, 34(2), 42-54.
• Morris, B. (2004). The birth of the Palestinian refugee problem revisited (Vol. 18). Cambridge University Press.
• Morris, B. (2011). Righteous victims: a history of the Zionist-Arab conflict, 1881-1998. Vintage.
• Schwartz, A. and Wilf, E. (2020). The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace. All Points Books.
• Shahak, I. (1989). A History of the Concept of "Transfer" in Zionism. Journal of Palestine Studies, 18(3), 22-37. doi:10.2307/2537340
  
  This article was published by the Vivekananda International Foundation on June 24, 2020

Regulating the use of autonomous weapon systems

Terminators running amok; the wanton killing of human beings; the end of civilisation as we know it; these are the sort of images that come to mind when the word ‘killer robots’ is used. But the term is really just a shorthand for autonomous weapon systems (AWS) or, more broadly, weapons that have some sort of artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities. Think of the US’s armed Predator drones, Israel’s Guardium, the unmanned ground vehicle that patrolled the Gaza border, or even Russia’s Poseidon, a nuclear-armed unmanned underwater vehicle that’s currently under development. Depending how you understand the concept of autonomy (even a bow and arrow system has some autonomy), AWS can refer to a wide spectrum of defence systems, some of which have been used in battlefields for decades, such as drones, while others are still a figment of imagination, such as killer robots.

Given this basic conceptual problem, it is not surprising that the states at the UN have had a tough time coming up with a concrete plan to regulate, let alone ban, such systems. Most recently in November 2019, states failed yet again to agree on whether to begin a formal deliberative process that would eventually produce a legal instrument, regulating the development and deployment of autonomous weapons. This was the fifth consecutive year that states that are party to the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) discussed the issue, and they are scheduled to continue doing so through 2020 and the year after.

Notably, at the November meeting, the states endorsed a set of guiding principles for autonomous weapons--they agreed that autonomous weapons must always be subject to human responsibility and operate within the framework of international humanitarian law--but they made little progress towards a binding treaty-like arrangement. Worse still, there is enough reason to argue that the international community will remain stuck at this point as long as it continues with the current structure and framework of the debate.

The current discourse on autonomous weapons began in 2012 when the US-based advocacy group Human Rights Watch and the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School published a report calling for a blanket ban on all fully autonomous weapon systems. The report received a lot of publicity, its message was amplified by the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, and within two years, the UN began informal discussions under the CCW.

The initial focus was on a blanket ban on autonomous weapons but thankfully, that has been set aside. The technologies underlying these weapons are simply too diffuse and too easily available for the ban to succeed, as Chris Jenks at the SMU Dedman School of Law points out. The focus now is on regulation. However, even though all parties now agree on the basic principles of using autonomous weapons, there is still along way to go before they can get on the same page.

For one, many of the states leading the development of these technologies and weapon systems, such as the US, Russia and China, and those with large defence-tech industries, such as Israel, either oppose regulation or have expressed concern that regulation may stifle innovation. Moreover, the states still have not been able to agree on one single definition for autonomous weapons. Also, there isn’t enough clarity on what the concept of ‘meaningful human control’ over the entire life cycle of an autonomous weapon system should look like—even though it is this concept that lies at the core of the aforementioned guiding principles.

As a result of these myriad roadblocks--some political, some ideological, and some conceptual--the CCW process around the governance of autonomous weapons risks running itself aground. To change course, it needs to go back a few steps and ask the most fundamental question: why do autonomous weapons need to be regulated? The answer is simple: autonomous weapons must be regulated so that their use does not violate the established principles of international humanitarian law (IHL). This, in turn, necessarily requires that humans retain control over their machines. If humans retain control, the main issue under the IHL rubric—accountability for the actions of an autonomous weapon-- is solved.

Accountability is the opposite side of the autonomy coin. As Rebecca Crootof at the University of Richmond explains, the more autonomous the weapon system, the harder it is to pin responsibility for its ‘actions’ on a human being. The situation is further complicated when, as George Washington University’s Laura Dickinson shows, multiple actors ‘use’ the weapon--working together to gather intelligence, deciding on a target, and deploying a weapon, resulting in a diffused decision-making process. However, if there is proper human control over the weapon, then in case of failure, the human operator can be held accountable

This is the point on which experts suggest the CCW should focus. Earlier this month, International Panel on Regulation of Autonomous Weapons (iPRAW), an independent group of scientists working with the UN on autonomous weapons, published a report recommending that the principle of human control be operationalized into a more concrete norm. The report listed three steps: “(1) abandon the distracting debates about a technical definition of LAWS, (2) focus on the human element (e.g. human control), and (3) analyse the impact of the operational context on the necessary level of human involvement.” These form an excellent ideational framework for the reasons. The concept is tech-agnostic and, therefore, in a sense, future proof. The focus on human control means that the framework deals not with the form of the weapon but its function. Member states at the UN CCW will do well to seriously consider these recommendations.

References:

1. Report of the 2019 session of the Group of Governmental Experts on emerging technologies in the area of lethal autonomous weapons systems. Available at https://undocs.org/en/CCW/GGE.1/2019/3

1. Crootof, R. (2016). “War Torts: Accountability for Autonomous Weapons”, University of Pennsylvania Law Review 1347–402.

1. Dickinson, L. (2018). Drones, Automated Weapons, and Private Military Contractors. In M. Land & J. Aronson (Eds.), New Technologies for Human Rights Law and Practice (pp. 93-124). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781316838952.005

1. Human Rights Watch and Harvard Law School International Human Rights Clinic (IHCR), “Losing Humanity: The Case Against Killer Robots,” Human Rights Watch, November 2012, available at https://bit.ly/2ZLqwkV

1. iPRAW. (2020). A Path towards the Regulation of LAWS. Retrieved from https://www.ipraw.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/iPRAW-Briefing_Path-to-Regulation_May2020.pdf

1. Jenks, C. (2016). False rubicons, moral panic, conceptual cul-de-sacs: Critiquing reframing the call to ban lethal autonomous weapons. Pepperdine Law Review, 44(1), 1-70.
   
   This article was published by the Vivekananda International Foundation on May 19, 2020

New Year review of major foreign policy developments in South Asia

Bangladesh

Upon winning the general election held in December 2018, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was sworn into office on January 3. This marked the beginning of her third consecutive term following the electoral victories of 2009 and 2014. Notably, her ruling coalition returned to power with a brute majority -- having secured 288 of the 300 parliamentary seats. This result was not entirely surprising given the continued decline of Bangladesh’s political opposition. The country’s main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party was effectively rudderless while the Jatiyo Oikyo Front failed to put up any serious challenger to face the prime minister.

On May 10, a boat carrying migrants from Libya to Italy capsized in the Mediterranean. Of the 51 Bangladeshis on board, 37 drowned; bringing back painful memories of a similar tragedy in February. In the following weeks, as survivors returned home to an uncertain future, their tragedy sparked a nation-wide conversation on migration--an issue that resonates deeply in the country where remittances from Bangladeshis working abroad make for the second-largest contributor to the country’s foreign exchange reserves.

On July 15, former president General HM Ershad passed away, marking the end of an era in Bangladeshi politics. A military strongman, Ershad grabbed power in 1982 in a bloodless coup and ruled for nine years. In 1990, he was forced to step down in the face of popular protests, but continued to be active in politics till the end of his life.

In September, the government launched an anti-corruption drive, focussing specifically on illegal casinos. Nearly a 275 people were arrested including several youth leaders and activists, and even local politicians, from the leading party.

In early October, the Prime Minister visited Delhi on a four-day official tour. The issue of river water sharing between the two countries received much attention, as did a bilateral agreement that would India to set up a surveillance system along Bangladesh’s coast.

On November 27, seven of the eight accused in the 2016 Holey Artisan Bakery terror case were convicted and sentenced to death. The verdict was welcomed across the country where the memory of the ghastly attack that claimed 23 lives is still raw; and the conversation about Islamist radicalisation far from over.

Sri Lanka

On April 21, Easter Sunday, local Islamist terrorists launched a series of coordinated attacks across the country, mostly targeting Christian worshippers in churches and Western tourists in luxury hotel. Specifically, the bombings were carried out in three churches in Colombo, Negombo, and Batticaloa, and at three hotels in the national capital. There were also smaller explosions in Dehiwala and Dematagoda. As many as 259 people were killed in the attacks including 45 foreign citizens, while hundreds more were injured. The Islamic State terror group took credit for the attack which, however, would not have been possible without local groups. In fact, in a follow-up incident, in April, local militants clashed with Sri Lankan security forces in a terror safe-house, in the town of Sainthamaruthu. Eventually, the militants blew themselves up, killing family members, including children. The government and security services were severely criticized for becoming complacent and allowing for intelligence failures. The attacks also had a debilitating impact on the tourism industry, the mainstay of the Sri Lankan economy.

In the aftermath of the Easter Sunday attacks, which saw Islamist terrorists target churches and tourists, anti-Muslim sentiment was on the rise in the country. In May, this sentiment erupted in riots, starting in Chilaw and then spreading across the Northwestern province. Muslim properties and businesses were targeted by rampaging mobs, and civilians were killed, even as security forces recovered weapons and other suspicious items across the country. To further complicate matters, a Muslim parliamentarian came under scrutiny for his links to the terror mastermind; eventually, in June, all of Sri Lanka’s Muslim parliamentarians resigned from their positions--ostensibly to allow for an impartial investigation into the attacks.

On November 16, presidential elections were held in Sri Lanka. Incumbent Maithripala Sirisena did not contest the election, with his term have been marred by the horrific Easter Sunday attacks and a bungled attempt to remove his prime minister from office the previous year. Instead, the fight was between former defence secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who was widely credited for winning the war against the LTTE, and Sajith Premadasa. Having campaigned on a national security platform, Rajapaksa won with more than 52% of the votes; while Premadasa secured about 42%, mostly in the Tamil-dominant north and along the eastern coast. Upon taking office, Rajapaksa appointed his brother, the former president Mahinda Rajapaksa, to the office of prime minister.

Pakistan

On February 26, in the aftermath of the terror attack in Pulwama, India conducted airstrikes across the Line of Control, targeting terror camps in Balakot in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. This was the first time since 1971 that Indian warplanes had crossed the Line of Control. The Pakistani Air Force launched a retaliatory airstrike the next day in which one Indian jet was shot down and its pilot taken hostage -- and later returned. The airstrikes upended conventional wisdom about risk management and conflict escalation in the subcontinent, but also sent bilateral ties which were already going downhill, into a freefall.

Pakistan’s ties with India worsened further after India abrogated Article 370 and changed the status of Kashmir, on August 5. This evidently came as a rude shock to the government in Islamabad even though the intentions of the ruling party in Delhi in this regard were clearly spelt out in its election manifesto. Pakistan protested loudly--it downgraded its relations with India, suspended trade and travel between the two countries, and also sought to mobilise international opinion against India. However, its efforts bore few fruits. The only positive development in this context was the opening of the Kartarpur corridor in November, and Pakistan’s offer of visa-free travel to Indian Sikhs wanting to pray at one of their holiest sites.

During the course of the year, Prime Minister Imran Khan also made two official state visits to China, where he met with President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang among others -- mostly to attract more Chinese investments. Pakistan is already one of the biggest recipients of Xi’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative in recent years, with Chinese investments in huge infrastructure projects in the country. However, these projects are not without controversy and, more worryingly for Khan, Chinese FDI has in fact fallen dramatically in the past fiscal year.

Khan also travelled to Washington, DC. where he met with US president Donald Trump at the White House in July. Overall, the visit was considered a success from the Pakistani point of view. The two leaders had previously been at loggerheads, and the visit allowed for some sort of rapprochement. This was mutually beneficial -- with the US, at that time, seeking to enlist greater Pakistani cooperation for its talks with the Taliban in Afghanistan; while Pakistan was desperately looking for a lifeline to pull itself out of its isolated position on the world stage. The cherry on the cake, for Khan at least, was President Trump’s offer to mediate in Kashmir.

Throughout the year, the Pakistan also struggled with its adversarial listing by the Financial Action Task Force, the inter-governmental body that monitors money laundering, terrorist financing and similar problems that threaten the integrity of the international financial system. The FATF had placed Pakistan on its Grey List in 2018, and given it certain benchmarks to meet by October 2019 or else risk being blacklisted alongside Iran and North Korea. By the end of the year, Pakistan had managed to avoid the Black List but couldn’t get off the Grey List either.

2019 closed on a particularly controversial note for the Pakistani military--with two major developments. First, former president and army chief Pervez Musharraf was found guilty of high treason and sentenced to death by the Islamabad High Court. His case is still being heard, but irrespective of how it unravels in 2020, the conviction in itself was hugely significant, and a first in the history of Pakistan. Second, incumbent Army chief General Bajwa Qamar Javed Bajwa’s term was extended by three years and this decision by the government ran into some major legal hurdles. For the time being, Pakistan’s top court has given the government and Gen Bajwa a temporary lifeline, but the issue remains far from being resolved.

Nepal

One of the biggest headline-grabbing events in Nepal in 2019 was undoubtedly the visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping in October. This was the first time in more than two decades that the Chinese president was visiting Kathmandu and, as is only to be expected, Nepal pulled all the stops for the visit. The two countries signed several agreements during the visit, mostly relating to transport connectivity and greater Chinese investment in Nepal. The latter brought forth certain complications, as the public noted that not all past promises of investment had borne fruit. Another bone of contention was an extradition treaty that China wanted Nepal (home to thousands of Tibetan refugees) to sign, but Kathmandu resisted--in part due to domestic public opinion and in part due to US pressure.

Indeed, Nepal spent much of 2019 continuing to balance itself between the competing interests of the US and China. In June, the US government unveiled its Indo-Pacific Strategy which was received much attention in Kathmandu given that Nepal was expected to play an important role in this strategy. However, the US’s IPS was of course pitted against China’s Belt and Road Initiative--and it seems like the scales tilted in favour of the latter.

With India, Nepal’s relations were largely on the positive side through 2019. External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar visited Kathmandu in August; the two countries inaugurated a major petroleum pipeline in September. And they also laid the foundation stone for a long-pending bilateral hydropower project. However, there was one controversy that emerged on the negative side -- India’s inclusion of the Kalapani region in its latest official political map sparked protests in Nepal which claims the region as its own. As such, the issue didn’t seem to get much attention in Delhi but, in Kathmandu, this was a big talking point.

This article was published by the Vivekananda International Foundation on January 18, 2020

Sri-Lanka-US military ties in the Indo-Pacific

On August 18, Sri Lankan media reported that the United States had decided to suspend bilateral negotiations with Colombo on the controversial Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) until after the presidential election in the island nation1. While this pause in talks may serve to distract the public for the time being and, perhaps drive attention towards other talking points as election day comes closer, the issue in itself can be expected to remain on the national agenda. Equally important, it will also be a touchpoint to understand how different geo-strategic equations are evolving in the region. In this context, two other US-Sri Lanka bilateral agreements deserve to be mentioned: the Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement (ACSA), and the Millennium Challenge Corporation’s (MCC) Sri Lanka Compact. Together with SOFA, the political narrative emerging from these three bilateral agreements speak volumes about how Sri Lanka, its neighbours, and its allies are navigating the choppy waters of the Indo-Pacific.

Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA)

Let’s start with the SOFA; this agreement provides a legal framework for when American military personnel visit Sri Lanka on peacetime missions such as training exercises, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief missions. Notably, Sri Lanka and the US already have a SOFA in place. The agreement was signed in 1995 when President Chandrika Bandernaike Kumaratunga was at the helm2. But Washington was keen on updating the agreement. Accordingly, negotiations began in August 2018 but the new agreement, as proposed by the US, has since come under much scrutiny and criticism3. It is perceived to be much wider in scope than the original 1995 version, and critics of the pact argue that, among other things, it undercuts Sri Lanka’s sovereignty.

A draft of the US proposal was published by the Sunday Times newspaper which highlighted some of the more controversial provisions4. At the top of the list is the proposal that visiting US military personnel, including civilian contractors, be accorded the same privileges, exemptions and immunities as US Embassy diplomatic staff. This has raised many eyebrows across the commentariat and among the public. And equally so has the proposal that US personnel be allowed to wear uniforms and carry arms while on duty. A third point that has caused much consternation is that Sri Lankan criminal jurisdiction not be applicable to US personnel, instead, US Armed Forces authorities will have disciplinary control. Other proposals highlighted in the Sunday Times include tax waivers for US personnel and property, permission for US vessels and vehicles operated by or for the US Department of Defence (DoD) to move freely and toll-free within Sri Lanka, permission for the DoD to operate its own telecommunications system etc.

Many see these proposals as an affront to Sri Lankan sovereignty and have expressed concern that inscrutable politicians in the country maybe neglecting the national interest5, although it is important to mention in this context that at least some of the anti-US outrage seems to be based on misinformation and misunderstanding of what such a deal actually entails. For example, as the Sunday Observer has pointed out, even the 1995 SOFA--signed to facilitate US assistance in Sri Lanka’s war effort against Tamil insurgents allowed US troops the same protection and privileges as enjoyed by technical and administrative staff at the US embassy6.

Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement (ACSA)

Nevertheless, the controversy over SOFA has also raked up a debate over ACSA which was renewed in 2017 after the lapse of the original agreement of 2007. Like SOFA, this bilateral agreement puts in place a logistical framework so that the US military can easily coordinate support, supplies and services (for example, food and fuel transfers) with its allies and partners7. In Sri Lanka, however, critics have raised red flags over the surreptitious manner in which ACSA was renewed in 20178. Neither was the agreement placed before Parliament nor were the inputs of the military leadership taken into account. Instead, ACSA was given the green light, quickly and quietly, by President Maithripala Sirisena and his cabinet. At the time, there was almost no media coverage of the agreement; the signing was done away from public view and the final agreement never released into the public domain.

The new ACSA is being seen as much like the proposed new SOFA - wider in scope than its predecessor with provisions allowing more privileges to the Americans. The eight page 2007 version of the ACSA had grown into an 80-plus page document in 2017 with a long list of annexes listing US commands allowed to use Sri Lankan ports. Of course, a longer document does not in itself mean more privileges, more access, or more exemptions, it could merely mean a more thorough and carefully negotiated agreement. However, it is the former perception that has gained strength as reports have emerged about how the new agreement is open-ended (in contrast to the 2007 version, which was valid only for seven years) and allows US military ships to enter Sri Lankan ports (previously, this permission was granted on a case-by-case basis) 9. Moreover, as the controversy has snowballed, President Sirisena has distanced himself from his cabinet’s approval and claimed that he was not aware of the differences in the two versions10. This has only served to fuel more anti-US conspiracy theories.

Millennium Challenge Corporation’s (MCC) Sri Lanka Compact

The third element in this mix is the five-year $480 million US grant, designed to spur economic development mostly through private sector investment in the island nation11. The grant money was being administered by the Millennium Challenge Corporation, a US congressional aid agency, which had been negotiating a “compact” with Sri Lanka. The MCC-Sri Lanka compact was based on a study done by the Center for International Development at Harvard University which had pinpointed three factors that were hindering Sri Lanka’s economic growth: lack of access to land (especially state land) for commercial purposes, inadequate overland transport, and policy uncertainty12.

The Compact was supposed to focus on improving the first two aforementioned factors13. In the transport and logistics segment, the plan was to overhaul traffic management, modernise the public transportation system, and build a road network that would connect the Central Province, Sabaragamuwa Province and Eastern Province to the Western Province. In the land management segment, it was suggested that a state land inventory or a consolidated land bank be set up, and that a slew of steps be taken towards reforming land governance such as fixing the process for registration of land deeds and land grants, easing the process for land valuation etc. For all practical purposes, the compact had been finalised earlier this year. The MCC Board had approved the plans and notified the US Congress, while the Sri Lankan prime minister had given it the green signal.

However, the MCC Compact soon came in for significant criticism on legal, environmental and political grounds. For example, Sri Lankan Survey Department employees went on strike to oppose the proposed engagement of an American firm to prepare the land survey maps14. They argued that not only was the project unnecessarily costly, it was a threat to national security as an American company would have access to sensitive information. Others opined that the proposed east-west economic corridor from Colombo to Trincomalee would slice the country into two15. Meanwhile, rights activists opposed the move to give land deeds to the rural poor16. They argued that, given the state of the rural economy, the deeds would only serve to incentivise the poor to sell their last asset for easy cash; which in turn would drive them further into poverty and straight towards the cheap labour pool even as private corporations and foreign investors would be laughing their way to the bank, having bought land at throwaway prices where labourers could toil for long hours for less than minimum wages.

Suspended Negotiations

The US embassy in Colombo did try to respond to some of these criticisms and concerns by reaching out to politicians as well as the public17, but as the noise around the MCC compact continued to grow louder, the final signing of the agreement was eventually put on hold. Of course, the possibility of future negotiations remains open, but for the time being the Sri Lanka-MCC Compact, along with the proposed SOFA, have been put on ice - at least until the presidential poll in November. The incumbent regime simply doesn’t have the political bandwidth anymore to push through any difficult legislation, least of all sign a controversial one with a foreign partner. Within the government, the president and prime minister are rarely on the same page, and neither men seem to enjoy the confidence of the public anymore.

Return of the Rajapaksas?

It is widely expected that former wartime Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa will be next at the helm, and it will be interesting to see how he manages these issues. Given his national security-centric platform and his popularity as a war hero, he might actually find it easier to convince the public that, for example, signing a military agreement with the US does not necessarily mean that Sri Lanka will become an American military base - much like Prime Minister Narendra Modi was able to do in New Delhi when India was debating similar military logistics pacts with the US.

And like Modi, and arguably every South Asian leader, the next president of Sri Lanka will also face the challenge of managing his country’s relations with the US vis-a-vis China which already has a well-entrenched presence in Sri Lanka. Indeed, it was Rajapaksa’s brother Mahinda who as president allowed Beijing to establish a strong foothold in the region via the Hambantota port. Two years after he was voted out of office, the port was taken over by Beijing, as Colombo struggled with Chinese debt. The question now is: Will the younger Rajapaksa also have a strong pro-China tilt?

In this context, it needs to be kept in mind that Gotabaya Rajapaksa has a long history of working closely with the Americans. For example, a US citizen until recently (though some reports suggest he may not have as yet renounced his US citizenship), it was he who had, as defence secretary, signed the first ACSA with the US in the early years of his brother’s presidency - though at the time, they probably didn’t have to count in the China factor. As the Sunday Observer notes, ACSA was a mutually beneficial development; Sri Lanka used the deal to signal American support in its renewed campaign against the LTTE while America gained a logistics hub in the strategically important island nation that straddles some of the busiest shipping lines of the world.

Even today Sri Lanka continues to have strong military ties with the US that hardly compare with its engagements with China. But that being said, there is no denying that China is also a much bigger player both in the country and in the region today than it was when the Rajapaksas first came to power. And while there may be concern in some quarters about Sri Lanka moving closer to Beijing under another Rajapaksa regime, it might be helpful to remember that Rajapaksa brothers are hardly Chinese puppets. Rather, as Jeff Smith of the Heritage Foundation writes, “They are Sri Lankan nationalists. They would likely welcome—perhaps even prefer—billions of dollars in U.S. investments, too”.

Smith explains that they turned to China because Beijing offered them a good deal, and more recently have also taken care to moderate to balance their positions. For example, the former president has been seeking to mend fences with Delhi after his decision to allow Chinese submarines to dock in Sri Lanka upset many in India18. His brother, if comes to power, will have to be much more careful. His handling of SOFA, ACSA and the MCC Compact will indicate how he intends to negotiate Sri Lanka’s relations with the US, China and even India. Today, Sri Lanka is a keystone in the emerging Indo-Pacific order, and the actions of the next leader in Colombo will be keenly watched in Washington, Delhi, and Beijing.

Endnotes:

1. “US suspends SOFA talks till presidential poll is over”. The Sunday Times. 18 Aug, 2019. http://www.sundaytimes.lk/190818/columns/us-suspends-sofa-talks-till-presidential-poll-is-over-363763.html.
2. . Mason, Chuck R. “Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA): What Is It, and How Has It Been Utilized”. US Congressional Research Service. 15 Mar, 2012. https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL34531.pdf.
3. Ramachandran, Sudha. “Sri Lankans Up in Arms Over US Military Pacts”. The Diplomat. 15 Aug, 2019, https://thediplomat.com/2019/08/sri-lankans-up-in-arms-over-us-military-pacts/.
4. “Sri Lanka's sovereignty and the US”. The Sunday Times Sri Lanka. 30 Jun. 2019. http://www.sundaytimes.lk/190630/columns/sri-lankas-sovereignty-and-the-us-355926.html.
5. “Inside story of how Sri Lanka fell into the ACSA-SOFA trap”. The Sunday Times. 7 Jul, 2019. http://www.sundaytimes.lk/190707/columns/inside-story-of-how-sri-lanka-fell-into-the-acsa-sofa-trap-357287.html.
6. Borham, Maneska and Wipulasena, Aanya. “Inside the ‘secret’ American defence agreements”. The Sunday Observer. 14 Jul, 2019. http://www.sundayobserver.lk/2019/07/14/news-features/inside-%E2%80%9Csecret%E2%80%9D-american-defence-agreements.
7. “Sri Lanka: Press coverage for signing of Acquisition and Cross Servicing Agreement (ACSA)”. Cable: 07COLOMBO304_a. 20 Feb, 2007. WikiLeaks. https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/07COLOMBO304_a.html.
8. Pieris, Kamalika. “Yahapalana and the United States of America Part 7.” 30 Jul. 2019, http://www.lankaweb.com/news/items/2019/07/30/yahapalana-and-the-united-states-of-america-part-7/.
9. Bandarage, Asoka. “Resistance to US intervention in Sri Lanka”. Asia Times. 6 Aug, 2019. https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/08/opinion/resistance-to-us-intervention-in-sri-lanka/.
10. Ferdinando, Shamindra. “Prez upset over US actions, accepts someone should take responsibility for ACSA. The Island. 26 Jun, 2019. http://www.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page=article-details&code_title=20650.
11. "Sri Lanka Intent to Sign CN”. Millennium Challenge Corporation, Congressional Notification. 25 Apr, 2019. https://assets.mcc.gov/content/uploads/cn-042519-sri-lanka-intent-to-sign.pdf.
12. “Sri Lanka Constraints Analysis Report”. Millenium Challenge Corporation. 2017. https://assets.mcc.gov/content/uploads/constraints-analysis-sri-lanka.pdf
13. Ladduwahetty, Neville. “The Millennium Challenge Corporation Compact with Sri Lanka”.The Island. 2 Jun, 2019. http://www.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page=article-details&code_title=205231.
14. De Alwis, Nathasa. “Surveyors prepare to strike over American Firm involvement in project." NewsFirst. 14 Mar, 2018. https://www.newsfirst.lk/2018/03/14/surveyors-prepare-strike-american-firm-involvement-project.
15. Waduge, Shenali D. “MCC or foreigners cannot be given Sri Lanka’s land without rule of law laid down by Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court”. Society for Peace, Unity and Human Rights for Sri Lanka. 25 Jun, 2019. https://www.spur.asn.au/2019/06/25/mcc-or-foreigners-cannot-be-given-sri-lankas-land-without-rule-of-law-laid-down-by-sri-lankas-supreme-court/.
16. Kuruwita, Rathindra. “MONLAR: Land given to the poor will end up with multinationals”. The Island. 8 Jul, 2019. http://www.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page=article-details&code_title=207148 .
17. Fernandopulle, Lalin. “MCC Compact: Wrong information needs to be cleared, says US envoy.” 18 Aug, 2019. http://www.sundayobserver.lk/2019/08/18/business/mcc-compact-wrong-information-needs-be-cleared-says-us-envoy.
18. Smith, Jeff. “Sri Lanka: A Test Case for the Free and Open Indo–Pacific Strategy”. The Heritage Foundation. March 14, 2019. https://www.heritage.org/node/11541027/print-display.
    
    (This article was published by Vivekananda International Foundation, a Delhi-based think tank)