Israel–Sri Lanka relations
bilateral relations between Israel and Sri Lanka
Israel–Sri Lanka relations refers to the bilateral relations between Israel and Sri Lanka.
Sri Lanka has an embassy in Tel Aviv. The current Sri Lankan ambassador to Israel is M. H. M. N Bandara. Israel formerly held an embassy in Sri Lanka, but today is represented in Sri Lanka by the Embassy of Israel in New Delhi, India.
History
Since its independence in 1948, Ceylon maintained limited ties with Israel compared to most of its neighbors, which refused to collaborate with or recognize Israel. Under UNP Prime Minister D. S. Senanayake, Ceylon began buying weapons from Israel, including the HMCyS Gajabahu.
SLFP Prime Ministers S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike and Sirimavo Bandaranaike were hostile to Israel in comparison, and preferred establishing closer relations with the Palestine Liberation Organization. In 1971, as part of her election campaign, Sirimavo Bandaranaike promised to close down the Israel embassy in Sri Lanka in support of the Palestinian cause. After Bandaranaike came to power, the Israel embassy was closed down despite several threats by lobbies in the United Kingdom to boycott Sri Lankan tea.
By the late 1970s, however, Lalith Athulathmudali and Ravi Jayewardene believed that Sri Lanka should turn to Israel to combat the Sri Lankan Tamil insurgents and the terrorism of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
“Israel–Sri Lanka relations” enters the record as bilateral relations between Israel and Sri Lanka. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Israel, Lanka and relations can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q28196016. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1948 and 1971.
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This entry incorporates text from “Israel–Sri Lanka relations” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.