Indonesia's 2026 Foreign Minister Statement on Palestine: A Critical Look

On January 14, 2026, at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Jakarta, Indonesia’s Foreign Minister Sugiono delivered his Annual Press Statement (PPTM 2026). He spoke of conscience. He spoke of humanity. He spoke of Palestine as a moral test for the world. He invoked President Prabowo Subianto’s instruction that Indonesia must not remain silent when humanitarian crimes occur openly. He reaffirmed that Palestinian independence is an amanat konstitusi—a constitutional obligation rooted in Indonesia’s own anti-colonial struggle. And then, in the same speech, he repeated the most dangerous lie in modern diplomacy: the two-state solution remains the final goal. Let us stop softening this with polite language. In 2026, continuing to promote the two-state solution is not just wrong—it is obscene. After Gaza has been obliterated. After tens of thousands of civilians have been killed. After starvation has been weaponized. After entire families, neighbourhoods, and histories have been erased. To still talk about two states is not diplomacy with conscience. It is diplomacy as cover. Cover for mass murder. Cover for apartheid. Cover for a genocidal status quo. The two-state solution is not “stalled.” It is not “under threat.” It is dead—and it was killed deliberately. For three decades, the international community used the language of two states to buy Israel time. Time to expand settlements. Time to annex land. Time to fracture Palestinian society into isolated, besieged fragments. While diplomats drafted declarations—the New York Declaration, the Sharm El Sheikh process—Israel built irreversible facts on the ground. Gaza was turned into a cage. The West Bank into a maze of walls and checkpoints. Jerusalem into a city slowly strangled of its Palestinian life. What remains of the so-called Palestinian state is a cruel parody: no borders, no army, no control over water, airspace, or economy. A people asked to call their prison a country. To support this today is not neutrality. It is an endorsement. Palestinians do not want the two-state solution. They know what it delivers: surrender without freedom. Humiliation without safety. A future permanently controlled by the very power that destroyed their present. And Israel does not want it either. Its leaders say this openly now. Settlement expansion is policy. Annexation is mainstream. Genocidal language is no longer whispered—it is broadcast. So let us ask the obvious question: Who is the two-state solution for? It is for diplomats who want to sound moral without challenging power. For governments that want to appear “balanced” while one side exterminates the other. For an international system that finds Palestinian suffering tragic, but Palestinian liberation intolerable. That is why proposals like an International Stabilization Force in Gaza are so dangerous. “Stabilization” is the language of empire. It means managing the aftermath of violence without dismantling its cause. It means policing the victims while guaranteeing impunity for the perpetrators. Palestinians do not need stabilisation. They need liberation. Any force that enters Gaza without ending Israeli domination will serve as a warden, not a protector. Indonesia should know better. This is a country born from resistance to colonialism, one whose constitution explicitly rejects colonial rule in all its forms. You cannot invoke that legacy while endorsing a framework that preserves colonial supremacy in Palestine. You cannot speak of conscience while clinging to a solution that requires Palestinians to accept their own permanent subjugation. There is only one path that still deserves to be called just: a single state in all of historic Palestine, where everyone—Muslim, Christian, Jew—has equal rights, equal protection, and equal political power. No supremacy. No apartheid. No ethno-state built on exclusion and violence. This is not radical. What is radical is asking the oppressed to compromise with their erasure. What is radical is watching genocide unfold and insisting that the structures enabling it remain untouched. Minister Sugiono said diplomacy must not lose its conscience. Then diplomacy must stop lying. The two-state solution is not peace delayed. It is injustice institutionalised. It is how the world has learned to live with Palestinian death while congratulating itself for “engagement.” History will not remember who issued the most statements. It will remember who had the courage to abandon a dead, deadly lie—and to say, without apology: this system must end, not be managed. The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.