Arugam Bay, Sri Lanka – The sun hung low over the Indian Ocean, casting an amber glow on the waves as a heated argument erupted in Arugam Bay, a popular beach in eastern Sri Lanka.
In the water, a group of local surfers were engaged in a dispute with Israeli tourists that kicked off over surf etiquette – or rather, from the perspective of the Sri Lankans, a lack of it.
Jeevan Hall, an internationally acclaimed Sri Lankan surfer, was in the lineup of the surf when he encountered an Israeli tourist repeatedly taking waves without leaving any for others. Frustrated, Hall approached the tourist – an off-duty soldier of the Israeli army – and asked him to respect the surfing code of conduct and share the waves.
What started as an innocuous request quickly escalated into a tiff. Two of the soldier’s friends, also Israeli soldiers on a break, joined in. The three started paddling around him in the water, hurling insults in Hebrew.
Other surfers rushed to support Hall, only to be met with accusations from the Israelis: “You only have issues with us because of the war.”
Hall knew the soldiers were referring to Israel’s war on Gaza. He quickly clarified that his frustration had nothing to do with politics but with the soldier’s blatant disregard for surf manners.
“This is a very common thing that happens in Arugam Bay,” Hall later told Al Jazeera.
But there is a reason why the Israeli soldiers referred to the war that is on a tenuous pause for the moment because of a ceasefire. In Sri Lanka, as in many other parts of the world, they are no longer as welcome as before.
Trouble in paradise
For decades, Sri Lanka has been a haven for international tourists seeking its pristine beaches, world-class surf, and a slice of tropical paradise – all at a relatively lesser cost than similar sites in other parts of the world.
Among the visitors, young Israeli tourists have carved out a notable presence, particularly the reservists – Israelis who have come out of the country’s compulsory military service.
In 2022, 9,000 Israeli nationals entered Sri Lanka, with the figure increasing by 1,000 the next year, according to local authorities.
In 2024, however, as Israel’s military campaign in Gaza turned into a genocide, the number of Israeli visitors to Sri Lanka doubled with an estimated 20,000 entering the South Asian island.
Mobile phone advertisements in Hebrew language at Arugam Bay, Sri Lanka [Prinita Thevarajah/Al Jazeera]
Shiro Jeyawadne, a Sri Lankan who moves between the east and south surf season each year, working in restaurants and bars along the coast, said she believes Israelis are vacationing in greater numbers in Sri Lanka as a way to “get over” the war they participated in.
“They don’t seem to care that there is tension between the wider community with them being here, their minds are elsewhere,” she told Al Jazeera.
In the island’s tourist towns such as Arugam Bay, the sight of business signs in Hebrew is normal, highlighting the enclaves of Israeli reservists who often stay for months on end. At least 100 Israelis have settled in the town, which has a total population of fewer than 4,000.
“I never need to know if my friends will be there. When I come to Sri Lanka, I know there will be other Israelis I can spend my trip with,” Tel Aviv-based T Oko told Al Jazeera.
For years, the relations between the local residents and Israeli visitors had been cordial as the influx contributed to a tourism-dependent Sri Lankan economy.
But cracks in this dynamic are now visible.
Several coastal tourist destinations – including Indonesia in 2018 and the Maldives in 2024 – banned Israeli passport holders from entering their countries. In December, Australia denied the entry of two Israeli soldiers who had served in Gaza.
In Sri Lanka, some believe that following suit would lead to an influx of “more ethically-minded” tourists who are otherwise hesitant to visit due to the dominance of Israeli reservists on the island’s beaches.
“The vibe would be different, the coastline culture would be more connected,” Jack Campbell, a long-term resident originally from Australia, told Al Jazeera.
“It’s a snowball effect because they exist with a group mentality. I don’t feel safe for my family here,” he said, referring specifically to Israeli soldiers who have been flagged as suspected war criminals.
‘War criminals’ on holiday
Gaza war crimes allegations and illegal businesses run by Israelis have prompted widespread anger and resentment among local communities in Sri Lanka. While a fragile ceasefire has been in place in Gaza since January, fears that the war is far from over are pervasive, worsened by provocative statements from leaders in Israel and its main global supporter, the United States.
It is illegal to work on a tourist visa in Sri Lanka. Yet, from hospitality and hotels to nightlife and wellness studios, unlicensed Israeli businesses have mushroomed across the island. Currently, there are more than 50 Israeli tourist ventures on the island – many of them owned by previous or current reservists with the help of corrupt officials, and often sidelining local businesses.
“We are cognisant that Sri Lankan workers in tourist hotspots need the income and perceive they are gaining income from Israeli businesses and tourists,” Serena Burgess, a Colombo-based activist involved in the island’s pro-Palestine movements, told Al Jazeera.
“From what we can gather, quite a lot of these businesses are sending profits to Israel through credit card transactions,” she said.
Sri Lankan activists organise campaigns to inform people of the Israel-Palestine conflict, and the extent of Israeli atrocities in Gaza and the rest of the Palestinian territory.
Activists also work towards the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement in Sri Lanka, distributing lists of Israel-linked corporations and organisations to people. Most of these activists requested anonymity due to security concerns.
A pro-Palestine sticker seen on a signboard in Ella, central Sri Lanka [Prinita Thevarajah/Al Jazeera]
Over the past six months, at least three incidents of physical violence by Israeli nationals have been reported by the locals, with police investigating them. In each incident, Israeli tourists physically attacked locals on the south coast who were known to be vocally pro-Palestinian.
Last December in Ahangama, a popular destination for young travellers, Israeli tourists approached a local family known for their work in Sri Lanka’s anti-Zionist movement, physically attacking and vandalising their property.
The same month, Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF), a Palestinian advocacy group, found that Israeli soldier Gal Ferenbook was holidaying in Colombo. The Belgium-based foundation is named after the six-year-old Palestinian girl killed by Israeli soldiers along with her family inside a car in Gaza. Since its formation last summer, HRF has pulled together lawyers and activists from around the world to prepare cases against Israeli soldiers based on social media posts by the soldiers themselves, boasting of what they did in the war.
The HRF issued a statement, urging the Sri Lankan government to arrest Ferenbook, who had posted a video on social media in which he was seen holding the body of a Palestinian over his tank, like a trophy. As soon as the request was raised, the Israeli soldier fled Sri Lanka in December 2024, reportedly with the help of local Israeli officials.
“It is absolutely not normal for these guys who just shot a kid in the head, who raped and murdered, to get on a plane and come here to chill on the beach,” Egyptian activist Zein Rahma told Al Jazeera last month while holidaying in southern Sri Lanka, where she realised she was sharing the beach with Israeli soldiers who had returned from Gaza.
Rahma said she made it her mission to report the presence of Israeli soldiers in Sri Lanka’s tourist towns. “This is no longer a local issue, it is an international one,” she said.
Sri Lanka is not a signatory to the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) 2002 Rome Statute which prosecutes individuals for war crimes. However, the island nation signed the Geneva Convention in 1949, which states that war crimes are a violation of humanitarian law.
“The international law and human rights standards are very clear. If there is evidence of international crimes, that needs to be investigated and individuals held accountable,” Sri Lankan human rights lawyer Bhavani Fonseka told Al Jazeera.
“It’s a question to pose to the new NPP government,” she said, referring to the governing National People’s Power alliance, headed by Marxist-leaning President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, which stormed to power in September last year.
Sri Lankan authorities have faced the question of whose side they are on multiple times since the war on Gaza began in 2023. While Sri Lanka, much like the international community, has voted against the war at the United Nations, the island is also struggling to come out of a historic economic crisis that saw the toppling of a government in 2021 and a subsequent economic bailout from lenders like the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The record financial meltdown also caused an unemployment crisis in Sri Lanka. Today, 4.7 percent of Sri Lankans are unemployed.
According to the island’s labour force statistics, in September 2024, the rate was 4.1 percent, prompting the government to send nearly 20,000 citizens to work in Israel’s farming and construction sectors to make up for the shortage of Palestinian workers due to the war in Gaza. Many of these Sri Lankan workers remain in Israel today.
Meanwhile, activists like Burgess are trying to educate the locals on why seeking employment in Israel is “particularly unethical”. But with very limited economic resources locally, it is unclear whether those calls will actually stem the flow of Sri Lankan workers headed to Israel.
Protection for whom?
In October last year, the US, the United Kingdom, Australian and Russian embassies in Sri Lanka issued now withdrawn advisories, asking their citizens to avoid travelling to Arugam Bay, a Muslim-majority town, over threats to Israeli soldiers living or holidaying there.
The alleged threat led to the deployment of Sri Lankan soldiers, helicopters and tanks on the beach, ending the east coast’s surf season abruptly and leaving the locals confounded. Jeyawadane, a local, claims there were fewer than 10 Israelis in Arugam Bay when the advisory by the Western nations was issued and there was no obvious physical threat to anyone. As the season had begun on the southern coast, many Israeli tourists had instead made their way down there.
But the Sri Lankan government escalated its response to the perceived threat, dispersing security personnel throughout the country’s tourist towns and arresting three people, including a Sri Lankan national living and working in Iraq. Vijitha Herath, minister of public security and foreign affairs, said the suspects had been taken into custody.
“The bay practically emptied overnight,” Hall told Al Jazeera. His family has run an iconic hotel in Arugam Bay for over a decade.
Along with almost all of the other hotels in Arugam Bay, the hotel received cancellations for weeks from tourists visiting from around the world, even after the advisory was withdrawn. Where once Arugam Bay was a hotspot for Israeli tourists, a synagogue and Shabbat centre operating in its back streets five years ago, now the streets were empty.
A month later, in November, Sri Lankan forces secured Chabad House, a Jewish centre constructed by Israeli nationals in Colombo, while orders were given to enhance security at hotels frequented by Israeli nationals.
The deployment of soldiers for the protection of Chabad House angered many Sri Lankans, who claimed it was illegally constructed, without a mandatory government permit.
When Member of Parliament Mujibur Rahman questioned Prime Minister Harani Amarasuriya on it in parliament in December 2024, Amarasuriya acknowledged that the Chabad House and other such centres, including in Arugam Bay, were operating without permission. According to Rahman, the construction began with the permission of the previous, now-ousted government.
Now, even with a new government in place, these admittedly illegal buildings are being protected by Sri Lankan defence forces, complained Rahman. As of February 2025, police were still seen guarding the Colombo Chabad House’s entrance. “We are struggling to understand who is behind this,” he told Al Jazeera.
He also alleged that the government was aware of the presence of potential Israeli war criminals in Sri Lanka. “The problem is, there are no systems for prior screening [of soldiers],” he said.
Many Sri Lankans, including Jeyawadane, say the country’s decades-old strategic ties with Israel may have prompted the security of the Jewish centres. “It makes sense that our defence force is still in cahoots with theirs – Israel did sell us weapons during our war,” Jeyawadane explained to Al Jazeera.
During Sri Lanka’s 30-year-long civil war with Tamil rebels fighting for a separate homeland for the ethnic minority community, Israel provided weapons and training to the Sri Lankan military. The civil war ended in 2009. But that relationship, critics say, was further nurtured by the powerful Rajapaksa family that dominated the island’s politics between 2005 and 2021, after which they were overthrown following a popular movement.
Ironically, the Rajapaksa brothers, especially former presidents Mahinda Rajapaksa and Gotabaya Rajapaksa, have themselves faced accusations of committing and overseeing war crimes during the civil war.
The NPP was voted to power last year by Sri Lankans fed up with years of corruption and they demanded accountability and punishment for those they believed were guilty. Many of those people are now enraged by suspected Israeli war criminals holidaying in their country.
“No more excuses. No more silence. It’s time we started to take back control,” said Burgess.
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