Practise what is preached not what is practised

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s advice to his visiting Sri Lankan counterpart, Ratnasiri Wickramanayake that, “Terrorism must be fought; one must not capitulate to it,” is, both prudent and timely.

Olmert’s advice not to give into terrorism, because it will only bring destruction to the country, would have been sweet music to the ears of Prime Minister Wickramanayake, during his official visit.

The visit, the first by a Sri Lankan Premier to Israel, a strong US ally, was seen as a tactical diplomatic move, to offset the damage done by a recent visit to Tehran by President Mahinda Rajapaksa, an active campaigner for Palestinian Independence.

The US State Department, in its latest report, strongly castigated the Sri Lankan Government on its poor human rights record, even though the US-led invasion of Iraq has been strongly criticised.

Our advice to Premier Wickramanayake is, do as President George Bush and Premier Olmert say, but don’t do as they do in Iraq and in the Gaza Strip, treating civilians as collateral damage in their war against terrorists.

Many a time, Israel bulldozed its way into the region, attacking terrorist groups like Hamas and others, forgetting that these groups used helpless civilians as human shields, as they cared less for their safety. But, responsible governments cannot afford to act and react like non-state actors.

In response to an Israeli offensive recently, in the Gaza Strip, that killed more than 120 Palestinians, about half of whom were civilians, a Hamas gunman killed eight students, aged 15 to 26, in a Jewish seminary, Merkaz Harav, early this month.

A few months back, responding to an attack that claimed to have killed Tamil civilians in the north, the LTTE, in a suicide bomb explosion, killed a similar number of students from D.S. Senanayake College, at the Fort railway station,.

But, despite this latest retaliatory attack on students in Jerusalem, the Israeli government pledged to continue peace talks with West Bank-based Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who will receive Premier Wickramanayake shortly.

The same cannot be said of the Sri Lankan Government, which appears to have caused a still birth at the All Party Representative Committee, which pledged to come up with a political package to resolve the ethnic conflict.

The government, which mooted the implementation of the 13th Amendment, which envisages a northeast provincial council, is gearing to secure plum positions in the bifurcated eastern provincial council, for which nominations begin on Thursday.

Besides the ruling SLFP, the JVP, TMVP, EPDP and the combined TULF- PLOTE- EPRLF (V), SLMC and UNP are all keen to contest these polls and get the best possible representation for their parties in this council. This is representative democracy at its height. The LTTE, if it is to command the respect of the Tamils, should not be a stumbling block to democracy, by preventing the Tamil National Alliance from contesting. It has done this several times before.

The government, for its part, should ensure that the military or the paramilitary groups do not use force to alter the will of the people, in any way, and make these elections a sham.