Prabowo’s Losing Gambit

In his address during the General Debate of the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly on September 23, Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto unveiled a striking — at first glance rather sharp — but, for informed analysts, not especially unexpected diplomatic shift in his country’s stance toward Israel and, by extension, the Palestinian question. He announced that Indonesia might recognize the sovereignty of the State of Israel as soon as Israel recognizes Palestinian independence. In the same speech — which undoubtedly stirred many emotions — Subianto also expressed his government’s willingness to deploy 20,000, or if necessary more, Indonesian peacekeepers to Gaza to help secure peace there.

Before that point, without once pointing a finger directly at Israel, he spoke in very general terms about hatred, racism, repression, apartheid, genocide and other evils of the modern world as threats to our common future, while also mentioning problems such as shortages of food, energy and water that afflict many nations. Describing the situation in Gaza as catastrophic, Prabowo Subianto remained consistent in his determination to avoid labeling Israel as the principal and sole culprit for the daily horrors of the Palestinian tragedy — he described events on the occupied territories in such vague terms that one could almost get the impression he was describing the suffering of victims of natural disasters like droughts or floods.

The Indonesian president’s desire not even unintentionally to offend or upset Israel was so conspicuous and unnatural that it must have deeply alarmed — and even irritated — the many diplomatic representatives attending the General Debate of the UN General Assembly who come from countries that demonstrate steadfast and consistent support and friendship for the Palestinian people. Toward the end of his controversial address, lavishly laced with numerous sentimental calls for peace, unity, and harmony — appeals far better suited to winners of a Miss World–style pageant — Subianto stressed that real peace cannot be achieved unless the world is ready to recognize and guarantee Israel’s security and safety.

What was probably intended as a historic address — at least the author of the speech, whoever that may have been, appeared to aim for that impression — opened with the traditional Muslim Bismillah, then continued with greetings in Hebrew, Hindi, and even Latin. But with each successive sentence, Prabowo Subianto’s remarks increasingly slid into a parade of cheap, hackneyed pseudo-humanitarian and quasi-pacifist slogans and phrases. In doing so, they entirely omitted — or perhaps even deliberately avoided — touching the substantive issue that should have been the central theme of the General Debate: concrete, practicable guarantees of Palestinians’ right to finally achieve genuine statehood. In spite of its excessively saccharine rhetoric, apparently intended to mask the fundamentally base intent of the Indonesian government to normalize relations with Israel without much thought for the catastrophic consequences of such a move, the speech did not impress. Rather than inspiring, it left a bitter sense of resentment at how the broader international public’s understanding of the Palestinian issue was belittled.

Israel is armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons, and its concern for our security guarantees is no greater than its regard for Palestinian lives. According to a report from May this year by Édouard Beigbeder, UNICEF’s Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa, more than 50,000 Palestinian children have been killed or seriously injured in the Gaza Strip since October 2023. At the same time, it is extremely important for Israel that as many Muslim-majority countries as possible abandon the Palestinian cause and formally recognize Israel’s full international sovereignty under circumstances that could reasonably be regarded as highly questionable.

When such a scandalous announcement comes from the highest officials of the world’s most populous Muslim nation, the legitimacy of sharp public protests is directly proportional to the size of the Indonesian nation, which does not deserve to be shamed and humiliated in this way. And while the Israeli public is utterly delighted by the speech of the Indonesian president — words that were immediately praised by U.S. President Donald Trump, making it easier for all of us to see that the winds of that dishonor in Jakarta are blowing straight from Washington and Tel Aviv — those of us who truly care about a Free Palestine must raise some very serious questions and demand convincing answers.

Canny Israeli politicians might be ready, in exchange for establishing full diplomatic relations with as many Muslim-majority countries as possible, to formally recognize Palestinian independence. But how naive — or hopelessly foolish — would one have to be to believe that such recognition would automatically entail the withdrawal of Israeli armed forces and Jewish settlers from Palestinian territories, or the return of Palestinian refugees? UN Security Council Resolution 242 explicitly called for the withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from the territories occupied in 1967 and for a just settlement of the Palestinian refugee problem; as a member of the United Nations, Israel has never fulfilled these international obligations, apart from the 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza Strip — an outcome we all know how it eventually turned out. Are we now expected to believe that anything would change if Israel were to formally recognize Palestine as an independent state? Likewise, under international law Jewish settlements in the West Bank are absolutely illegal, yet they continue to expand and Palestinian territories are annexed under various pretexts. Does anyone seriously believe that Israel — having invested billions of dollars in building these settlements, whole towns with developed infrastructure — would surrender all those facilities to an independent Palestine?

Do we not have the right to regard Prabowo Subianto’s initiative as a dangerous trick—one that, given the close ties between the U.S. and Indonesia, was very likely hatched in Washington? It is more than obvious that the aim of this new Zionist deceit is to mislead as many Muslim-majority states that currently lack diplomatic ties with Israel as possible, persuading them to recognize Israel with false promises that formal Israeli recognition of Palestine would somehow bring real sovereignty and independence to that state’s territories.

The truth is very different, painful though that may be, and we must confront it as it is: without a substantive change on the ground, all recognitions of Palestine — even those by Israel and the U.S. — have only symbolic value. If we are to talk about a genuine peace, we should not waste time contemplating guarantees to Israel, nor would guarantees from Tel Aviv and Washington really benefit the Palestinians. On the contrary, Israel would have to make a serious effort to deserve the normalization of its relations with Muslim nations.

First, all Israeli armed forces should immediately withdraw to Israel’s borders prior to the 1967 Six-Day War. Second, all Jewish settlers should be removed from the occupied Palestinian territories. Only then would it make sense to create a new Green Line demarcation between Palestine and Israel as part of the largest UN peacekeeping operation since the organization’s founding. Thus, after a stable demarcation and peace had been established, Palestinian refugees had returned to Palestine and a roughly normal life been restored, and with the assistance of the international community—above all member states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation—a large-scale reconstruction of destroyed Palestinian cities, infrastructure, and economy could begin, Israeli recognition of Palestine might then be considered as a basis for establishing diplomatic relations between the Zionist state and Muslim nations that currently do not recognize it as legitimate. Any solutions that propose a different sequence of steps only play into deceptions such as the shameless “Trump Gaza Plaza” project.