Singapore – Indonesia's president-elect, Prabowo Subianto, said on Saturday that his country was willing to send peacekeeping troops to enforce a ceasefire in Gaza if required.
Speaking at the Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia's premier security conference, Prabowo said United States President Joe Biden's three-phase proposal for a ceasefire in Gaza was a step in the right direction.
"When needed and when requested by the [United Nations], we are prepared to contribute significant peacekeeping forces to maintain and monitor this prospective ceasefire as well as providing protection and security to all parties and to all sides," Prabowo said.
Indonesia has regularly sent troops to the UNIFIL peacekeeping mission to safeguard the border between southern Lebanon and Israel, where they have captured the hearts of local residents and fellow peacekeepers.
The 72-year-old former special forces general and current defense minister takes on the presidency of the world's most populous Muslim nation in October.
He said President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo had instructed him to announce that Indonesia was also ready "to evacuate, to receive and to treat with medical care up to 1,000 patients" from Gaza.
The Indonesia Hospital in Gaza, which was run by an Indonesia NGO, was taken over by Israeli forces and shuttered in November amid the fighting.
Prabowo said a comprehensive investigation into the humanitarian disaster in the Rafah area of Gaza was needed as well as a "just solution" to the situation in the occupied Palestinian territories.
"And that means the rights of not only Israel to exist, but also the rights of the Palestinian people to have their own homeland, their own state, living in peace."
Jakarta has been fiercely supportive of promoting a two-state solution to the decades-long occupation by Israel, which has indiscriminately killed over 36,000 people in Gaza since the Oct. 7 attack across the border by Hamas, the rulers of the Palestinian enclave, was left to fester.
Separately, outgoing President Jokowi condemned Israel's attack on Rafah and called on Israel to obey the International Court of Justice.
"Israel should have an obligation to obey international courts, including stopping offensive attacks against Palestine," Jokowi told reporters on Saturday.