By Dr. Punsara Amarasinghe
Colombo, October 7 (Eurasia Review) – In Sri Lanka, the public reaction to the State of Israel has always been a twisted one, mixed with all its concomitant worries, mainly triggered by conspiracy theories, false narratives, and many other phobic factors.
While acknowledging these good, bad, and ugly aspects as dots connected to the same web that encompasses Israel’s complex role in modern Sri Lankan political history, it is imperative to examine how Sri Lanka’s largest development project in the post-independence era fell under Israeli influence, which altered the socio-ethnic fabric of the island.
The Mahaweli Development Project, officially launched in 1961, represents the largest engineering initiative undertaken in Sri Lanka. Although conceptualized in 1960, the motivations for this project can be traced to the period following independence from British rule. Don Stephan Senanayake, the first prime minister of independent Sri Lanka, envisioned national development that aligned with the island’s ancient hydraulic civilization. Senanayake’s proposal to establish agricultural settlements in the dry zone of Sri Lanka drew inspiration from contemporary examples, most notably the Jewish settlements in the British Mandate of Palestine.
To encourage D.S. Senanayake to model Sri Lankan agricultural settlements after those established by Jewish communities, then Land Commissioner C.L. Wickremasinghe visited the British Mandate in Palestine. Another influential civil servant, Sir Arthur Ranasinghe, also encouraged Prime Minister Senanayake to adopt the agricultural innovations of the Zionist movement. Sir Arthur reportedly presented Senanayake with a copy of Fellah’s Farm, published by the Jewish Agency in Palestine, which later served as inspiration for Senanayake’s conceptualization of agricultural settlements.
Both Sir Arthur Ranasinghe and H.A.J. Hulugalle, the author of Senanayake’s biography, held strong pro-Zionist views that influenced their approach to foreign policy as prominent advisors in Senanayake’s administration. Hulugalle frequently expressed admiration for the collectivist principles of the kibbutz system, as described in his posthumously published memoirs. The kibbutz, which combined Zionist ideology with utopian socialism and emphasized national revival, transformed prevailing stereotypes of Jews as merchants and moneylenders into an image of a community committed to defending the land. Although there is no definitive historical evidence that Senanayake directly adopted the kibbutz model, it can be inferred that Hulugalle, along with Wickremasinghe and Ranasinghe, played a significant role in shaping Senanayake’s Gal Oya agricultural settlement, which closely resembled the Jewish settlements observed in the British Mandate.
Agriculture and Patriotism is a booklet authored by D.S. Senanayake in 1935. The work is inextricably tied to his political idealism and the goals he sought for independent Sri Lanka. Senanayake’s vision in the text is strikingly similar to the Jewish agricultural settlements in Palestine in the early 1930s. The ethos DS promoted—such as self-resilience and a prosperous peasantry—mirrored the aspirations of the Zionist movement in Palestine.
The second phase of Israeli connection in the agricultural settlements is aptly manifested in the Mahaweli Development Programme (MDP). This is undoubtedly the largest development project engineered in post-independent Sri Lanka. Sri Lankan political geographer Thiruni Kelegama argues that the Sri Lankan government, which came to power after 1977, accelerated MDP on ethno-nationalist lines similar to the World Zionist Organization’s Settlement Division, Matityahu Drobles, for the Development of Settlements in Judea and Samaria. When first presented in the early 1970s, MDP aimed to finish within 30 years and was seen as a movement dedicated to fostering village life, the nerve center of Sri Lanka’s development. The romanticized objectives of this long-term plan intensified after the electoral victory of JR Jayawardene’s government in 1977. The new administration sought to shorten the MDP’s duration from 30 years to 5 years. These development goals faced major obstacles as ethnic conflict emerged in Sri Lanka. This conflict implicitly gave Israelis ways to resume diplomatic ties with Colombo. Amidst complex Cold War dynamics in South Asian politics, Israel entered the Sri Lankan situation when Tamil insurgency groups received backing from India’s RAW.
The plan of accelerating MDP as a quick remedy for Sri Lanka’s energy and the seeds for MDP’s prime goals in resettlements stemmed from an Israeli agent called Amy Yar. Closer acquaintance Yar built with JR Jayawardene’s administration resulted in bringing more Israelis to the island under the guise of agriculture, in particular, Gamini Dissanayake maintained a good rapport with several Israeli agricultural advisers who were present in the island during the Mahaweli development projects. Two academics from Hebrew University Jerusalem provided a comprehensive analysis on the project to the government of Sri Lanka and a big chunk of work was given to an Israeli construction company named Solel Bonah. It should be noted that Israeli architect Ulrik Plesner came to Sri Lanka in 1981 to plan the new towns in the Mahaweli settlements in the hill country. In Plesner’s own words, “ I tried to make towns which ten years from now will be pleasant to live in”. In fact, Plesner chose some of the basic principles that may have been borrowed from Jewish settlements in Palestine, such as making all the buildings located off the main road to provide a fairly dense, urban character with streets, squares, and large shade trees. What Plesner planned for MDP had remarkable parallels with Israeli settlements such as Ma’ale Adumin and Ariel, showing the mutual justification of demographic engineering.
Gamini Dissanayake’s initiatives to resettle Sinhalese peasants in Maduru Oya, which were ultimately discontinued following public exposure, demonstrate the influence of Israeli settlement policies in Judea and Samaria as a means of preventing external penetration. Minister Dissanayake’s associate, Herman Malinga Gunaratne, organized the settlement of Sinhalese populations in Maduru Oya to disrupt the territorial continuity between the Batticaloa and Trincomalee districts. Gunaratne actively promoted the formation of a settlers’ militia to protect the Sinhalese community from attacks by Tamil insurgent groups. Drawing on Yigal Allon’s “The Making of the Israel Army,” Gunaratne argued that, just as every Jewish settler became a soldier, every Sinhalese settler should be prepared to take up arms for self-defense.
This controversial project of the mid-1980s, inspired by Israeli models, ultimately failed to achieve its intended outcomes. Nevertheless, Israeli involvement had a lasting influence on the MDP and agricultural settlements in Sri Lanka. The ongoing relationship between the military and the Mahaweli Development Project may be attributed to the practices introduced by Israeli advisers during the 1980s.
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Dr. Punsara Amarasinghe is a post doctoral researcher attached to Institute of Law, Politics and Development in Scuola Superiore Sant Anna, Pisa.
