Indonesian Troops in Gaza: The Peril of Complicity in Occupation

Indonesia is being invited not to keep the peace in Gaza, but to help launder an injustice. The proposed International Stabilization Force (ISF), a centerpiece of President Donald Trump’s Gaza plan, is presented as a humanitarian intervention: temporary, multilateral, and necessary to stabilize a shattered territory. But stripped of its rhetoric, the ISF is something far more dangerous. It is an attempt to internationalize the management of Israel’s occupation while absolving Israel of responsibility for the devastation it has inflicted. If Indonesia sends troops under this framework, it will not be a neutral peacekeeper. It will be an accessory. Gaza does not suffer from a lack of international supervision. It suffers from siege, bombardment, and occupation. Since Israel’s genocidal war began, more than 70,000 Palestinians have been killed. Entire neighborhoods have been flattened. Aid has been throttled, delayed, and politicized. Israel has violated the current cease-fire hundreds of times since it took effect on 10 October 2025. Yet none of this is what the ISF is designed to confront. Instead, the force’s central mandate—made explicit by the United States—is to disarm Palestinians. Mike Waltz, Washington’s ambassador to the United Nations, has stated plainly that the ISF will be authorized to disarm Hamas “by all means necessary.” President Trump has echoed that threat, promising disarmament “the easy way or the hard way.” Israel, meanwhile, faces no equivalent coercion. There is no enforcement mechanism compelling it to withdraw its forces, lift the blockade, or stop violating cease-fire terms. The imbalance is total—and intentional. READ: Italy, Indonesia to send forces to Gaza under strict conditions This is how occupation is normalized: not by denying its existence, but by outsourcing its maintenance. Indonesian officials have tried to soften the reality. Foreign Minister Sugiono has described Indonesia’s potential role as temporary and humanitarian, focused on aid access and a transition toward a two-state solution. The Foreign Ministry has emphasised the need for a clear mandate and rules of engagement, insisting Indonesia does not want to “force peace.” But peace cannot be forced on the occupied while the occupier remains armed, entrenched, and unaccountable. What the ISF proposes is not peacekeeping but population control—asking foreign soldiers to police the ruins of Gaza while Israel retains decisive military dominance from the air, land, and sea. Muhammad Waffaa Kharisma, an international relations analyst in Jakarta, has issued a warning that should not be ignored. Sending Indonesian troops without genuine legitimacy, he said, would turn them into “the face of new colonialism.” He is right. When soldiers from the Global South are deployed to discipline another colonized people—under a plan written in Washington and filtered through Israeli vetoes—the result is not solidarity. It is complicity. Other regional actors appear to understand this. Turkey and Egypt have refused to commit troops to forcibly disarm Palestinian factions. Hamas has said it would accept an international presence only as a buffer separating Israeli forces from Palestinian civilians, not as an occupying police force inside Gaza’s cities and camps. Khaled Meshaal has described disarmament without Israeli withdrawal as existentially impossible. These positions are not extremism; they are realism. No people under occupation voluntarily surrenders its leverage while the occupying army stays put. READ: Israel says Gaza administration committee was announced without coordination Indonesia’s participation would also mark a sharp and troubling departure from its own recent history. In 2024, Jakarta stood before the International Court of Justice to denounce Israel’s occupation as illegal. That stance recognized a fundamental truth: Gaza’s crisis is not a security failure but a legal and moral one. The ISF abandons that clarity. It replaces accountability with administration, justice with management. For a nation born of anti-colonial struggle, this is not a technical policy choice. It is a test of identity. Indonesia’s moral standing has never come from military power. It has come from refusing to legitimise domination—whether in Palestine, apartheid South Africa, or elsewhere. To send Indonesian troops into Gaza under the ISF would invert that legacy, placing Indonesian soldiers between Palestinians and their demand for freedom while shielding Israel from consequences. There is still an alternative. Indonesia can insist that any international presence be conditioned on a permanent cease-fire, full Israeli withdrawal, unrestricted humanitarian access, and Palestinian consent. It can continue to pursue accountability through international law rather than help construct mechanisms designed to bypass it. It can refuse to participate in schemes that ask the occupied to disarm while the occupier remains armed to the teeth. History is unforgiving to those who help manage oppression in the name of order. Indonesia should not allow its soldiers—or its principles—to be used that way. Peace in Gaza will not come from stabilising occupation. It will come from ending it. OPINION: What Indonesia’s silence on Iran is meant to preserve The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.