Srilanka, May 18 -- Rarely does Sri Lanka's fractious Parliament speak with a single voice, yet last week Cabinet Ministers, Marxists, Sinhala-Buddhist nationalists, Tamil lawmakers and Muslim party leaders, gathered in Colombo to mark the 77th anniversary of the Nakba, and to demand justice for Palestine.

From pleas for an immediate ceasefire to calls for sanctions and humanitarian corridors, every speaker framed Gaza's agony as an affront to Sri Lanka's own anti-colonial ethos. The unprecedented consensus, forged amid a divided election season, shows how the Palestinian struggle continues to knit together this island's competing parties under the banner of universal human rights.

Sri Lanka's political parties don't usually see eye to...