The eruption of violence in Jerusalem and rocket-fire from Gaza this week is challenging both an Israeli government committed to “shrinking the conflict” with Palestinians, and its Arab neighbors desperate to maintain calm in the occupied West Bank and in Gaza. And it is threatening a wider war all have tried to avoid.  

It comes despite Israeli efforts to avoid a repeat of the chain of events nearly a year ago that saw heavy-handed Israeli police tactics during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan help fan mass Palestinian protests and Israeli communal violence and trigger a Gaza war.

In recent weeks, the Israeli government loosened restrictions on Palestinians’ travel between the West Bank and Jerusalem and coordinated with Arab states ahead of Ramadan.

So why, then, is violence erupting once again in the holy city as Ramadan, Passover, and Easter coincide?

“There were lessons learned from 2021 to handle the situation better; Israeli police have changed their tactics and have tried to keep things calm the first two weeks of Ramadan,” notes Mairav Zonszein, senior Israel-Palestine analyst at the International Crisis Group in Tel Aviv.

“But at some point, even if there are areas of improvement, things will always bubble up if there is no progress on the political side to the conflict.”

Israel and its Arab partners are learning, say analysts, that the pursuit of calm and diplomacy alone cannot prevent conflict in the absence of a political settlement rooted in dignity.

Diplomatic overtures

In a stark change from right-wing governments led by former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the broad and increasingly fragile Israeli coalition government has chosen pragmatism over populism in its approach to the Palestinians.

It did not impose restrictions on entry from the West Bank to Israeli-controlled East Jerusalem for Ramadan – a policy that longtime observers termed “lenient” given a spate of attacks carried out by individual Palestinians that killed 14 people in Israel in the past month. More than two dozen Palestinians have been killed in recent weeks in clashes with Israeli forces.

In late March, Israeli President Isaac Herzog met with Jordan’s King Abdullah in a rare visit, and Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett followed up with a phone call days before Ramadan to discuss measures to ensure prayer-goers’ access to Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque, of which the Jordanian monarch is the internationally recognized custodian.

Israel reached out also to the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, which, with Jordan, share an interest in ensuring calm in Israel and the occupied territories.

The three Arab states also wish to avoid a repeat of the 2021 Gaza war, which saw the Islamist militant movement Hamas surge in popularity among Palestinians. 

Instead, they seek to bolster the increasingly unpopular Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority, which is struggling to pay government salaries and is viewed by Palestinians as irrelevant.

But analysts say the focus on keeping the calm and bolstering the PA has created a blind-spot for Israel and Arab states: Palestinians’ rising frustration and demands for dignity.

“Politically, nothing has changed for Palestinians in the past year. If anything, it has gone backwards,” says Ms. Zonszein.

Mahmoud Illean/AP

Palestinian fireworks explode around Israeli police in the Old City of Jerusalem, April 17, 2022. The clashes occurred after the police cleared Palestinians from the sprawling Al-Aqsa Mosque compound to facilitate a visit by Jews to the holy site that Jews revere as the Temple Mount.

Dahlia Scheindlin, a pollster and Tel Aviv-based political analyst, says the political and diplomatic stagnation fosters unrest. “Steps that are not directed towards solving final status issues are not meaningful in addressing the political conflict,” she says, “and political conflict results in violence.”

There are no official talks between Israel and the Palestinians – any political process or negotiations are consistently rejected by Mr. Bennett and many of his political partners – and hopes for Palestinian statehood are scarce.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority itself has withdrawn into what some describe as a closed autocratic mafia, refusing to hold elections and cracking down on dissent in the West Bank. It is increasingly distrusted by Palestinians, who say they are facing increased attacks by Jewish settlers in the West Bank, discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel, and violent arrests by Israeli forces in the West Bank that have killed multiple unarmed Palestinian civilians this month.

“Palestinians feel lost. Palestinians have no effective leadership that can advocate for their rights, and there is no prospect for a remotely better future than they have now,” says Tahani Mustafa, International Crisis Group’s West Bank analyst. 

“Palestinians are sandwiched between a military occupation that has only gotten worse under Bennett and a PA that has lost all legitimacy,” says Ms. Mustafa, who adds that Palestinians are increasingly venting their mounting frustrations toward Israel.

More Passover visits to site

In recent days these frustrations have erupted over the intrusion of far-right Israelis and Israeli police onto the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, one of Islam’s three major holy sites, revered by Jews as the Temple Mount.

Passover this year has seen a rising number of increasingly emboldened far-right Israelis praying within the Temple Mount and demanding access.

Each day this week, Israeli police have escorted far-right Israeli prayer groups into the Al-Aqsa compound, an act viewed by Palestinians as inflammatory and a violation of the site, which due to its administration by the Jordanian-affiliated Waqf, is seen as a rare public safe space for Palestinians to gather.

“Because of the coincidence of the holidays this year, it means on both sides there is an increased religious sentiment that something is at stake,” says Khalil Shikaki, director of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research.

It has attracted stone-throwing and Molotov cocktail-carrying Palestinian youths eager to retaliate and violent reprisals from Israeli police. Clashes led to police storming inside Al-Aqsa Mosque itself last Friday, the arrest of dozens, and the injury of 140 Palestinians.

Beginning Friday, Israel says it is closing off access to the mosque compound for non-Muslims for the remainder of Ramadan, but the daily incursions have triggered Palestinians’ deep-seated fears of Israel’s intentions over the Temple Mount/Noble Sanctuary. In particular, Israeli security forces have employed a new strategy of forcibly evacuating Muslim prayer-goers from the mosque compound ahead of the visits by the far-right Jewish groups.

Ariel Schalit/AP

Israeli right-wing activists gather for a march in Jerusalem, April 20, 2022. The flag-waving march around predominantly Palestinian areas of Jerusalem's Old City was planned despite a police ban that sought to prevent an event seen as potentially triggering violence.

The measures have disrupted the visits to Al-Aqsa of Muslims from across the West Bank and Israel as well as the dozens of Muslims practicing Itikaf, in which they spend 24 hours or multiple days in the mosque praying and reading the Quran as encouraged during Ramadan.

The Jerusalem Waqf on Wednesday claimed that the move represented a new Israeli policy of de facto segregating the compound into Jews-only and Muslim-only prayer times – similar to the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron in the West Bank and an upset of a decades-old status quo.

Palestinians are calling on one another on social media to “defend Al-Aqsa Mosque,” leading to dozens of Palestinians – Muslims and Christians alike – to sit defiantly at its perimeter inches away from Israeli police.

In Gaza, Hamas watches

Watching developments closely is Hamas, the Gaza-based militant movement which may choose to repeat its 2021 strategy and escalate Al-Aqsa tensions into a war to embarrass the Palestinian Authority, its rival, and bolster its own image as “defenders of Jerusalem” and the true “representatives of Palestinians.”

“Although the Israeli government, regional actors, and the Palestinian Authority do not want war, if Israeli authorities take additional steps that undermine Palestinians’ ability to pray at Al-Aqsa, this can lead to a confrontation with Hamas and bring everything back to last year,” warned Mr. Shikaki.

After a week of Hamas restraint, militants in Gaza fired a rocket toward Israel early Thursday that observers viewed as a “warning.” Israeli jets responded with airstrikes on Hamas facilities.

Arab diplomats say the Jerusalem tensions are also fraying the recently warmer ties between Israel and its Arab partners, undermining the joint de-escalation efforts.

Amid rising popular anger at home over Al-Aqsa “violations,” the Jordanian prime minister this week hailed Palestinian rock-throwers as heroes, prompting Mr. Bennett to accuse Jordan of “backing those who support violence.” Jordan in turn threatened to recall its ambassador and tear up a recent water-for-solar energy deal with Israel.

The UAE summoned the Israeli ambassador in Abu Dhabi and condemned the violations.

“We have to figure out how to live together, that’s my job; to provide security for Israelis, dignity for Palestinians. … We’re succeeding,” Mr. Bennett said of Israel’s handling of the crisis in an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Wednesday. “But at the end of the day, my utmost responsibility is to provide security to the Israeli people.”

Observers say that as long as Palestinians are left without hope, that security will prove elusive.

“While creating limited economic opportunity and diplomacy is an improvement from last year, it has done nothing to resolve the overall Israel-Palestinian conflict, which this government has chosen not to pursue,” says Ms. Scheindlin, the public opinion expert.

“Now the situation can get out of control any second, and it would be another setback for everyone.”

AP/File

Passengers at a railway station in Minsk, Belarus, stand in line to board a high-speed train on May 28, 2021. Many people have sought to leave Belarus to avoid the growing repression under authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko in recent years. Now concern about war-related economic sanctions is adding to the emigration trend.

Yuliya remembers vividly the day Russia invaded Ukraine. She was skiing with her fiancé in Germany, booked to return to her home in Belarus. An opponent of the war, she wondered if she should go back to one of the few nations actively supporting the invasion.

“It was like crazy, crazy emotion, day and night, sitting at the table and checking the flight,” recalls Yuliya, who like many people in this story does not want her last name used for fear of government retribution. “I understood that I can’t go back, because it’s not safe.” 

But that meant leaving behind her parents, an apartment full of possessions, and her rescue dog named Amy.

The couple decided she should shelter in Poland instead. Her employer, a Western information technology firm, had already agreed she could work remotely from Warsaw. She would wait a week to see how things turned out.

From Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine, a steady trickle of highly educated migrants or refugees has turned into a flood. Tens of thousands of often technically trained workers are fleeing war (in Ukraine) and political repression or the fallout from Western-imposed economic sanctions (in Belarus and Russia).

They are taking refuge in a great arc of nations from Lithuania to the north, Poland to the west, and Georgia and Kazakhstan to the south and east. A boom for these host nations, it is a brain drain for Belarus and Russia that appears likely to impose long-term damage on economic growth and diversification. The implications for Ukraine are less clear. 

“All three countries have had a vibrant technology sector,” says Oleg Itskhoki, an economics professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. “These are the most skilled workers.” 

Of the three countries, only Ukraine has the potential to join those nations for which a brain drain becomes, surprisingly enough, an economic boon. 

“One of thousands” in Belarus

The loss of such workers is most pronounced in Belarus because the flood of emigrants began there even before the invasion. The 2020 election of Alexander Lukashenko to a sixth term as president – an election widely viewed as fraudulent in the West – set off a chain of protests and heightened repression that caused a growing number of highly skilled workers to leave the country. When Russia invaded Ukraine in February with President Lukashenko’s active support, Western companies began urging their Belarusian employees to leave the country.

“Belarus is, mentally, further along” in the brain drain process, says Paul, a senior director of an international IT firm with programmers in Belarus as well as Russia and Ukraine. “When we suggest they should leave, they’re much easier to convince [than in Russia or Ukraine]. We are trying to get people to understand the world has really changed and you might want to think about relocating.”

So far, the company has successfully moved a quarter of its Belarusian programmers out of the country. But the conversations are difficult, says Paul, who also requested his last name not be used for fear of repercussions against his Belarusian colleagues. Employees often ask if the company is threatening to fire them if they don’t move. The message is more nuanced, he says. “If you stay, it’s our intention to employ you for as long as we can. But we can’t be responsible for future sanctions” that nations, including the United States, may impose on production linked to Russia or Belarus. 

Even before the 2020 election and crackdown, many educated Belarusians were prime movers of protest against the regime.

“I always knew my country was a dictatorship,” says Kristina, who spent some of her college years in the West. Although she got an invitation to stay on and teach in the West, she went back home to use her new skills to help Belarus. “I was a little bit naive, thinking that at this stage of my life I’d rather change things from the inside.” 

It lasted a year. Her superiors, though supportive, told her they didn’t understand what she was talking about and asked her to make her conclusions more optimistic in her reports. 

Czarek Sokolowski/AP/File

Pavel Latushka (left), a Belarusian dissident in Poland; and Belarusian Olympic sprinter Krystsina Tsimanouskaya (right), who came to Poland fearing reprisals at home after criticizing her coaches at the Tokyo Games, talk to journalists in Warsaw, Poland, on Aug. 5, 2021. Both Russia and the allied nation of Belarus have been seeing an outflow of people to other nations – which has accelerated due to the war in Ukraine and resulting economic sanctions.

When she protested the 2020 election, she was arrested and imprisoned for two weeks. “The conditions are unbearable,” she says. She was moved from cell to cell – the last one with 10 women in a cell. “They didn’t beat girls. At least physically, I wasn’t tortured in this sense,” Kristina says. But she describes seeing the guards brutally beat male detainees. “It not only affects you; it really affects your family. ... The toughest part, at least on my part, was to see the bad condition my mother was in” after Kristina’s release.

Now living and working in the West, she estimates that half of her high school graduating class has also left Belarus.

Belarusian businesses are also leaving. Igor has pulled his software development company out of Belarus and relocated temporarily to Kazakhstan. He’s scrubbed his website of all mention of Belarus and relocated about 40% of his Belarusian workforce to Kazakhstan, Georgia, and Poland, and hopes eventually to relocate 75% of them.

“I’m one of thousands of businessmen from Belarus whose companies are relocating,” he says. “We stand with Ukraine and we want to stop the war.”

The impetus for people to leave is often corporate as well as personal. Western sanctions aimed at squeezing Mr. Lukashenko’s regime are making it nearly impossible for Igor’s Western clients to pay him. One huge U.S. customer has dropped the firm completely because it’s Belarusian. 

Places like Almaty, Kazakhstan, have become so crammed with digital refugees that apartments are scarce. In Tbilisi, Georgia, rents have doubled since the war began.

The backdrop: shrinking populations

Formal asylum numbers following the Russian invasion of Ukraine are not yet available and do not capture the flight of high-skilled Belarusians to non-European Union countries. And they are tiny compared with the mass exodus of war refugees from Ukraine. For the last quarter of 2021, some 1,200 Belarusians and 1,370 Russians applied for EU asylum. By contrast, an estimated 4.3 million Ukrainians have fled the war, most of them to neighboring EU countries, according to the United Nations.

Nevertheless, the outflows from Belarus and Russia are significant, because the asylum-seekers represent some of these nations’ best and brightest, and also because the emigration is taking place in the context of long-term population decline in both countries. 

In five waves of emigration starting with the pogroms in the late 19th century, Russia could replace the lost population by natural increase. In the latest wave, which a 2019 Atlantic Council report dubbed the “Putin Exodus,” the nation no longer has that population buffer. Instead, a population decline of 20 million is predicted by the end of the century. By 2019, an estimated 1.6 million to 2 million Russians had left since Mr. Putin’s rise to power, according to the report, not quite the level of departures in the decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall. 

However, the war in Ukraine appears to have sped up that exodus. Some 50,000 to 70,000 IT specialists have already left since the war began, the head of the Russian Association for Electronic Communications told Russia’s parliament last month. Up to another 100,000 could be gone by the end of April, he warned.

Long-term effects are economic – and political

The Putin exodus is likely to have serious economic effects long term. The Atlantic Council report cited talent outflows as one main factor behind Russia’s economic stagnation. (Other analysts point to the declining quality of Russian education as a bigger long-term problem than brain drain.)

So far, neither Mr. Lukashenko nor Mr. Putin has seriously cracked down on emigration, although Belarus instituted limits on ground transportation last year, purportedly because of the coronavirus. 

They may have their reasons for letting highly skilled workers go. Such workers “are more entrepreneurial and willing to push for political change,” says Giovanni Peri, director of the Global Migration Center at the University of California, Davis. Their departure may mean less political opposition at home. 

Even in democracies, such migrations can slow political change. When highly skilled workers left portions of Italy during an emigration wave a decade ago, “it was harder to see political change” in the regions losing those workers, Professor Peri says. “Leaving generates less change and more of a reinforcing cycle of stagnation, even from a political point of view.”

At some point, however, the outflow may become so large that neither Belarus nor Russia can continue to ignore it. “Clearly, that’s something that the Kremlin will be concerned about,” says Elisabeth Braw, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank. “The reason I think that they’re watching very closely is that Belarus has lost a huge part of its tech community, which has left for Poland. ... And Russia doesn’t want that.”

For more than a decade after World War II, East Germany allowed some 2.5 million of its citizens, many highly educated and skilled such as doctors, to leave the country before it began building the Berlin Wall in 1961. Today, “it’s not feasible for any country to build a wall, but you can try to keep your citizens from leaving the country in other ways,” Ms. Braw says.

A potential plot twist for Ukraine

Ukraine is a different story. Its brain drain is perhaps far more temporary, at least as long as it remains an independent country. For one thing, under certain circumstances, brain drains can create a brain gain, even for a nation that’s losing people. “That effect has been documented all over the world,” says Michael Clemens, director of migration, displacement, and humanitarian policy at the Center for Global Development in Washington. 

Some emigrants return, sharing their expertise and capital to form businesses in their native land. Even if emigrants don’t go back, often their investment and remittances, knowledge, and products do flow back, research shows. 

Paul, the executive at the international IT firm, has observed something else: The diaspora from Ukraine so far has been matched by remarkable productivity – 90% of normal – among the firm’s workers remaining in the war-riven nation. 

“We were just shocked, flabbergasted. And then gradually we began to understand this sort of human dimension,” he says.

First, they need to make money. Second, making money is patriotic because it supports the Ukrainian economy. And third, “when you’re in hell, having a distraction is very valuable,” he says. “There’s a picture someone gave me of an employee sitting in a bomb shelter with a laptop working away. It’s an amazing picture.”

Nearing the two-month anniversary of the invasion, Yuliya, the professional from Minsk, is still in Poland and is applying for a work visa to continue working there until she and her fiancé can get married. Slowly, visiting friends have brought her clothing and other possessions across the border as they leave Belarus. She was able to find a Belarusian pet transportation service to bring her dog, but protests by anti-Belarus activists turned what should have been an eight-hour car trip into a three-day ordeal, with Amy kept in a cage the whole time.

Would she go back to Minsk if Mr. Lukashenko were no longer in power? “Definitely yes! It’s my homeland,” she says. “But I don’t know when it will happen and who will be the next president.”

Laxmi Tikhatri/Courtesy of Prem Pariyar

Prem Pariyar, pictured here in Albany, California, on Jan. 30, 2022, was instrumental in raising awareness about caste discrimination in higher education while earning his master's degree in social work at California State University, East Bay.

Prem Pariyar thought an overseas education would be a way out of the caste discrimination he faced in central Nepal. But he was mistaken.

Shortly after arriving in the United States, he accepted an invitation to have lunch at a friend’s place, someone he had known back home. When it was time for the meal to be served, Mr. Pariyar – who is Dalit, an oppressed caste historically considered impure or “untouchable” – was stopped by the host’s wife. “I was told not to approach the food because I would pollute it,” recalls Mr. Pariyar. “Caste discrimination does not require a visa. It travels everywhere.”

It’s a common story. Young people from lower castes go abroad to escape discrimination and seek new opportunities. Once they arrive, they find the same caste dynamics at play in the classroom and beyond. Over the past few years, several major U.S. colleges have updated their nondiscrimination policies to include caste, including Brandeis University in 2019 and Colby College in 2021. Thanks in large part to Mr. Pariyar’s own activism, California State University this year became the country’s first public university system to ban caste-based discrimination. The new policy has sparked backlash from some faculty and Hindu groups, but also reinvigorated efforts to fight caste discrimination in the U.S. and back in Nepal. 

Sarita Pariyar, writer and board member of Samata Foundation, a Dalit think tank in Nepal, believes that CSU’s recognition of caste sends an important message to political leaders, educators, and the public. “Wherever Nepalis go, whether to the U.S. or the moon, they will not accept untouchability,” says Ms. Pariyar. 

Outlawed, but ingrained

Similar to India and Sri Lanka, Nepal has a long history of caste. The hereditary system broadly divided communities according to the Hindu model of four social classes, or varna: Brahmins (priests and teachers), Kshatriya (rulers and warriors), Vaishya (merchants and traders), and Sudra (servants and laborers). Below the Sudra are Dalits, formerly known as “untouchables.” Over time, these classifications were codified into laws that transcended religious lines.

Nepal declared the caste system unconstitutional in 1951, and criminalized caste-based discrimination in 2011. Yet even now, caste remains a prominent form of discrimination in both urban and rural areas throughout South Asia, where the mention of a surname or occupation can put a person on the receiving end of harassment for its association with lower castes. In India, the practice of “untouchability” – through segregated housing or denying Dalits entry into homes, cafes, and temples – is common. In the Dalit community of Nepal, which accounts for up to 20% of the population, education levels are lower than average and poverty levels run high.

Mr. Pariyar grew tired after years of harassment while working as a teacher in Kathmandu. “Everywhere there was resistance and trouble,” he says, but the final straw came in 2014, when a gang of roughly 30 dominant-caste people attacked his family at their home. Mr. Pariyar’s father had been about 50 cents short while buying a tailoring machine that day, and the seller was offended by his request to pay the money later. The father was hospitalized for severe injuries. Mr. Pariyar says he had to knock on the doors of politicians and human rights activists before the police allowed him to file a complaint, and the family was later pressured to drop the investigation. Mr. Pariyar moved to the U.S. the following year, and not long after enrolled in the social work master’s degree program at CSU, East Bay. 

Caste travels west

Vipin P. Veetil, an economist based in India, says the caste system has forced the lower caste into menial professions and barred them from receiving an adequate education in South Asia, leading many to head west in search of better opportunities. But they often find Brahmins dominate higher education overseas as well – as Dr. Veetil noticed during his Ph.D. studies at George Mason University. 

Damian Dovarganes/AP/File

Students walk past the Harriet and Charles Luckman Fine Arts Complex at the California State University, Los Angeles campus on April 25, 2019. In January, CSU became the country’s first public university system to ban caste-based discrimination.

A 2016 survey conducted by the Dalit civil rights organization Equality Labs suggests a third of Dalit students in the U.S. face discrimination during their education. One in 4 Dalits surveyed experienced verbal or physical abuse, and half said they were afraid of their caste being “outed.” More recent surveys and media reports have also found evidence of caste-based favoritism in Silicon Valley, as well as harassment in social and community spaces.

Dr. Veetil says that CSU’s decision and others like it provide a “protection to make the American dream come true” for the lower castes.

Before the change, Mr. Pariyar noticed that his colleagues at CSU spoke about gender, race, and other inequalities in class, but seemed unaware of what he saw as the biggest injustice occurring in South Asia and among the diaspora. When he tried discussing his experiences with casteism, professors and other South Asian students denied any knowledge of modern-day discrimination, leaving him feeling embarrassed. 

But he kept speaking up, and eventually a professor connected Mr. Pariyar to Equality Labs, spurring more formal activism. The graduate student began seeing results last year, with the Cal State Student Association voting to recognize caste as a protected status and the University of California, Davis, where Mr. Pariyar also lobbied for change, adding caste to its protected categories in November.

Calls for acknowledgment were picking up steam, even among students from the dominant caste, recalls Mr. Pariyar, who graduated in 2021. “This movement has become an interfaith and interracial coalition,” he adds. Then, in a historic move, CSU’s board of trustees voted unanimously to make caste a protected category in January, effective on all 23 campuses.

Fixing or fueling stigma?

Some faculty and Hindu groups disapprove of the change, arguing that caste discrimination would already be prohibited under the university’s rules on race, national origin, or ancestry.

In an open letter to the board of trustees, more than 80 CSU faculty members anonymously wrote that highlighting caste will “cause more discrimination by unconstitutionally singling out and targeting Hindu faculty of Indian and South Asian descent.”

Suhag Shukla, co-founder and executive director of the Hindu American Foundation, supports the professors and lauds their courage.

The new policy “is an arbitrary, unjustified, and a deeply offensive affront to their decades of service,” says Ms. Shukla by email, adding that CSU has created a new problem by “institutionalizing implicit bias and discrimination against all people of Indian and Hindu heritage.”

Many Dalits and allies disagree. They argue caste already follows South Asians overseas, but incidents of discrimination or exclusion often go unreported because of the lack of formal recognition in schools and workplaces. Mr. Pariyar’s success has inspired other students to push for caste protections at their own institutions.

Bikash Gupta, a Nepali student of public policy and data analytics at Carnegie Mellon University, is drafting a letter with fellow students to submit to the school administration. “It will talk about how caste is a form of discrimination and a global issue, and the evolving research or interpretations of caste,” says Mr. Gupta.

Experts say change will be more difficult – but equally, if not more, important – back in Nepal, where discrimination is rampant despite being illegal. But Ms. Pariyar, from the Dalit think tank, says Mr. Pariyar’s persistence is a reminder for Nepali students not “to remain silent on unacceptable casteist slurs and caste-based discrimination, especially in higher education.”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the description of Vaishyas.

On a blustery April morning, the winding cobbled streets are largely deserted in this stone and timber village high in Italy’s Apennine Mountains.

A century ago, more than 100 children attended the local school. Now, the school is closed and just three children live in the village, one of them just a few months old – the first baby born in a decade. There were once four grocery shops; now there are none.

But all that may be about to change dramatically.

Calascio is one of 21 villages across Italy that are to receive €20 million ($21.7 million) each from the government in Rome. The money is intended to breathe new life into Italy’s abandoned and depopulated villages by restoring abandoned buildings, attracting new residents, and reversing decades of neglect.

The funds are part of an unprecedented €200 billion in grants and low interest loans that the European Union is giving to Italy to help it recover from the post-pandemic economic slump.

A chance to restore the village

Each of Italy’s 21 regions and autonomous provinces were asked to nominate just one village to receive €20 million. Calascio was the winner for Abruzzo, a region in the middle of Italy which is known for snow-capped mountains, earthquakes, and imposing castles.

Before World War I, Calascio had a population of 2,500. That has now dwindled to less than 140, and during the harsh winters there can be as few as 90 residents. Poverty and a lack of jobs meant that families emigrated to the United States and Canada at the end of the 19th century, and later to Belgium and northern France to work in coal mines.

“Life was very hard here. The village didn’t get running water until 1911. It was poor, like so many parts of Italy. When people left, they just closed the front door and that was it. Their houses were abandoned,” says Paolo Baldi, the village mayor. 

An array of projects now promise to breathe new life into the village.

Nick Squires

Calascio once was a wealthy village thanks to the wool trade, its past evident in the ornate residences that line the streets.

The mayor wants to establish an albergo diffuso, or “spread-out hotel.” It is an Italian concept in which empty historic houses in a village are turned into accommodation, grouped around a central reception building, a restaurant, and a bar. There are also plans to establish a museum and a gallery space for local art.

About a quarter of the €20 million will be devoted to the Rocca Calascio castle, which sits atop a rocky outcrop above the village. It was named by National Geographic as one of the 15 most beautiful castles in the world and has appeared in several films.

An archaeological dig will be commissioned to explore the site and to try to establish exactly when the nearly millennium-old castle dates from. Footpaths will be laid out over areas which are rocky, uneven, and currently hard to access.

There will be a school for shepherds to teach young people the art of raising sheep – Calascio once grew rich on wool, its past wealth evident in the ornate residences that line the streets.

Abandoned buildings will be turned into a space for new start-ups, with high hopes of attracting digital nomads who have the freedom to live where they want.

These projects should, if all goes to plan, create around 100 jobs directly and indirectly, says Mayor Baldi.

Spillover effects?

But while Calascio basks in the glow of the promised funds, other villages are unhappy that they are to receive nothing.

Marco Marsilio, the governor of Abruzzo region, said it seemed unfair that the central government in Rome would devote so much cash to one community and ignore 16 other villages that had submitted applications for the money.

Remo Casilli/Reuters

Caretaker Franco Cagnoli plays a drum near the Rocca Calascio castle, above the village of Calascio, Italy, Feb. 25, 2022. The castle has appeared in several Hollywood films, including "The Name of the Rose," "Ladyhawke," and "The American."

“The ministry’s decision to concentrate €20 million to just one winner leaves 16 other places empty-handed,” he said.

The people of Calascio argue that there will be knock-on effects for the whole area.

“They have not understood that what is good for Calascio will be good for them as well,” says Franco Cagnoli, the custodian of the castle. “If a thousand visitors arrive in one day and find nowhere to eat in Calascio then they will go looking for restaurants in other villages.”

Village bar owner Franca Fulgenzi says the impending funds will create “infinite” possibilities.

“We’re going to have to educate the locals a bit, teach them how to welcome visitors,” she says. “We’re a mountain village with a slightly closed mentality, not like a village on the coast, looking out to sea. There are some locals who just find the presence of tourists annoying.”

In a local enoteca (wine shop), where wooden tables and chairs are clustered beneath an arched stone ceiling, Paolo Quaglia serves up plates of cheese and salami. “I hope it will be a success. This is an amazing area, it’s very underrated,” he says.

The risk of corruption

The aim of investing in a select group of picturesque but struggling villages “is to create sustainable growth and to spread it right across the country,” said Dario Franceschini, Italy’s culture and tourism minister. “The potential of the internet and broadband will make these villages places of work. It’s a big challenge but this is just the beginning.”

Not everyone is convinced that throwing such large amounts of money at such small communities is necessarily a good idea. Italy has an unhappy record of wasting public funds, either through a lack of vision, too much red tape, or outright corruption.

In one of the most notorious examples, it took billions of euros and more than 50 years to complete a 275-mile stretch of highway in the south of the country, with the project dogged by interference from Calabria’s feared ‘Ndrangheta mafia.

But Mayor Baldi is confident that the windfall from the EU offers a chance to pump new blood into the village, hopefully by attracting new families to live in Calascio.

“Whether they are Italian or foreigners, it doesn’t matter. The important thing is that they live here all year round, that they don’t just visit in July and August. I think that if you offer opportunities, then people will stay.”

During his Hollywood career, Timothy Eulich has been mistaken for Robert Pattinson and Jake Gyllenhaal. It’s a sign of a job well done. Mr. Eulich has been a stunt double for both stars, and many others. Tumbling down escalators? Being set on fire? It’s all in a day’s work. 

These days, the 20-year veteran of film and TV is spending more time behind the camera as a stunt coordinator. Mr. Eulich recently worked with actor and martial arts star Michelle Yeoh (“Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”) in “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” It’s a mind-bending, metaphysical action movie brimming with absurdist and risqué humor. A collaborative effort by filmmakers Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert – who call themselves The Daniels – it plays as if “The Matrix” had been co-directed by Salvador Dalí and Buster Keaton.

Mr. Eulich – who is the brother of the Monitor’s Latin America editor, Whitney Eulich – recently discussed via email and phone the craft behind intricately choreographed stunts. His goal: ensure that the action sequences serve the story so they aren’t “empty calorie” scenes. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity. 

Before you got into stunt work, were you one of those kids who was climbing every available tree and pestering your mother to take you skydiving?

I’m sorry to say I was not. I loved martial arts. And I also really wanted to be an actor. I saw a path there for myself and ... put all of my time and resources and energy into being a stuntman, which was the first step to being a stunt coordinator. 

To me, the action sequences are the most dramatic points in the story. I have this analogy that I use. It’s like in a musical when the characters break into song and dance. It’s not arbitrary. They have reached a point in that story where simply speaking the words no longer serves them. It’s no longer bringing them closer to their objectives. They have no other choice but to break into song and dance to express themselves. And it’s the same with a good action movie. You’ve reached this point in the story where words are no longer solving our problems. We have no choice but to break into action. It’s drama made dynamic. That really excites me.

What kinds of stunts have you performed?

I jumped off of the Great Wall of China stunt-doubling Matt Damon. I transferred from a moving speedboat to a helicopter in Fiumicino, Italy, doubling [for] Dylan O’Brien. I’ve been hit by speeding cars. I’ve flown on wires. I’ve been dragged down the road by a pickup truck with my hands bound. I’ve played zombies, vampires, ninjas, pirates, police, and firefighters. I’ve done sword fights, knife fights, bar fights, martial arts fights, and shootouts. That’s a short list.

Mike Dempsey/Courtesy of Timothy Eulich

Timothy Eulich grew up loving martial arts and wanting to be an actor. He’s stunt-doubled for the likes of Matt Damon and Robert Pattinson. “Collaborating within the frenetic energy of creative people is by far the most exciting and joyful part of my job,” he says.

Before dangerous stunts, how do you deal with any fear? 

It’s an oddly grounding moment for me. I feel very, very at peace. It’s almost meditative: just slow everything down. I find myself becoming hyper aware of everything around me and everybody’s movements and everybody’s actions. Right before you’re about to do something very potentially dangerous or probably painful, you have people touching up your makeup, poking your face, playing with your clothes, making sure [your] clothing looks exactly like the actor’s. You have other performers coming in and asking questions. There’s a lot of energy building up right before that moment. ... So you have to internalize that and find a way to prepare within that chaos.  

You were a fan of “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.” Could you ever have imagined working with Michelle Yeoh? 

That was a very influential film in my overall life and certainly influenced the trajectory of the career path that I’ve ended up going down. I don’t know that I ever really imagined actually working with any of the stars that I idolized from a very influential age. But working with her [on “Everything Everywhere All at Once”] was such a treat. She would come in and rehearse with us for a couple of hours and never go full-out. And in any of the fight choreography [she would] ask lots of questions. Then she would film it on her phone and then she would leave. But then she would come back on the days that we would shoot the action sequences, and we would work through it with the other performers until everybody was comfortable. And then she would just turn it on and perform her balletic, violent performance. 

Allyson Riggs/A24/AP

Actors Michelle Yeoh (left) and Jing Li share a scene in “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” Timothy Eulich worked together with Ms. Yeoh on her fight choreography.

The fight choreography is very influenced by the old Jackie Chan movies where there’s a lot of humor. Tell me about that.

The directors and myself and most of my stunt team and a lot of people who worked on the movie, we grew up consuming those films. But it’s not something that is done very often in today’s moviemaking. So for example, the first fight that you see in this movie is the fanny pack fight. You are pairing that silly item with these devastating and brutal reactions. So you still get that exciting fight sequence, but there’s also a humor to it that is unexpected and just amplifies the energy.

What can you tell us about choreographing stunts for the upcoming Season 4 of Netflix’s “Stranger Things”?

I worked on “Stranger Things’’ as a supporting stunt coordinator for the main stunt coordinator, Hiro Koda, who is a big mentor of mine. I can’t talk too much about it, but from an action perspective, this season is significantly amplified from what we have seen in previous seasons. I’m really excited to see how that all plays out. 

You’re an advocate for stunts to be an official Academy Awards category. What’s your pitch for that?

We are arguably the only creative entity within the filmmaking process that’s not recognized by the movie academy. We’re craftspeople and artists. We bring a tremendous amount of creative influence into these films that audiences are watching.  

In your job, what brings you the most joy?

Collaborating within the frenetic energy of creative people is by far the most exciting and joyful part of my job. That moment where everybody is coming together with the same goal of making this show the best show that we can possibly make it, that puts a huge smile on my face. 

“Everything Everywhere All at Once” is rated R for some violence, sexual material, and language.

Reuters

Residents protest to demand government support for soup kitchens in Pamplona Alta, a low-income neighborhood on the outskirts of the Peruvian capital where soaring food prices are placing animal proteins out of reach for the most vulnerable residents.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has united many democracies to defend not only Ukraine, but also their own liberal order as well as each other. Yet now another challenge is putting democracies to the test: inflation.

As with the Ukraine war, the global rise in prices has started to renew cooperation among wealthier democracies. Many leaders want to ensure this economic crisis is not a setback for low-income nations where democracy is most in jeopardy.

Their concern was on display this week at the annual spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. The big creditor countries, mainly in Europe and North America, were focused on more than how to respond to inflation in their own countries. They also worried about the effects of higher interest rates on other countries that are less well-off, about relieving supply chain bottlenecks everywhere, and about possibly easing the debt burden in high-debt, low-income countries.

“We must work together to resolve global challenges. The quality of our world, not just the quality of our economy, is at stake,” said IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva.

The current inflation crisis has its roots in the trillions of dollars pumped into economies during the pandemic to keep individuals and business afloat. The pandemic also disrupted global supply chains, and then, as economies revived, high demand led to supply shortages of both labor and goods. In addition, the sudden decrease in Russian fuels and Ukrainian wheat added to inflation.

The African country of Ghana illustrates the difficulty many countries face. Although it is a politically stable nation, it is heavily dependent on imports of grain, oil, and steel from Ukraine and Russia. According to the African Development Bank, the price of wheat is up by 62% and fertilizer by 300%. The government now faces concerted strikes by industrial unions demanding that salaries be indexed to inflation.

With foreign debt obligations equal to 78% of its gross domestic product, Ghana has little economic flexibility. That problem could be made worse as Europe and the United States raise interest rates to tame prices at home.

Central bankers and economists this week have discussed a range of ways to help insulate developing countries from economic shocks. Solutions include greater clarity from richer economies about the remedies they are implementing to address inflation at home. They also include new requirements for debt transparency to enforce better governance in recipient countries and enable better lending practices.

“Prosperity, like peace, is indivisible,” said Henry Morgenthau, a former U.S. treasury secretary at the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference where the World Bank and IMF were created. If countries today work together on global inflation, they might again show that a global economy requires indivisible cooperation.