Indonesia’s President Prabowo Subianto has pledged to send tens of thousands of peacekeepers to conflict zones and said the country could recognise Israel, but only if Palestinian statehood is first acknowledged.
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The idea of conditional recognition for Israel drew sharp reactions at home, with critics accusing Prabowo of undermining Indonesia’s pro-Palestinian stance, while others saw the shift as a calculated diplomatic overture aimed at boosting Jakarta’s standing on the world stage.
In the first address to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) by an Indonesian leader in a decade, Prabowo said his country was prepared to dispatch “20,000 or even more” troops to hotspots including Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan and Libya – a move he described as a concrete commitment to multilateralism and UN peacekeeping.
“In our struggle for independence, in our fight to overcome hunger, disease, and poverty, the United Nations stood with Indonesia and gave us vital assistance,” he told the General Assembly on Tuesday.
“Indonesia is today one of the largest contributors to United Nations Peacekeeping Forces. We believe in the United Nations, we will continue to serve where peace needs guardians, not with just words, but with boots on the ground.”
Prabowo also condemned “a catastrophic situation” in Gaza, saying that Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation, was siding with Palestinians as Indonesians experienced first-hand the pain of oppression and apartheid.
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“We were treated less than dogs in our own homeland” during centuries of colonisation, Prabowo said.