Radhiyya Indra, Jakarta – Indonesia has stressed the importance of providing stability through the United States-led Board of Peace (BoP) to pave the way for lasting peace in Gaza, amid domestic concerns about Jakarta's planned troop deployment to the region.
In a meeting with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio last Thursday in Washington, Foreign Minister Sugiono reiterated the BoP's role in creating stability that would allow humanitarian access in war-torn Gaza.
"Efforts to maintain stability [in Gaza] must be part of the path toward sustainable peace through the two-state solution," Sugiono said, as quoted from a statement released by his office on Sunday.
Indonesia has long been advocating for the two-state solution to solve the conflict in the Middle East, in which an independent Palestinian state can be recognized and coexist with Israel.
According to State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott, Rubio expressed gratitude to Sugiono for Indonesia's support for US President Donald Trump's BoP as a founding member and "for its commitment to post-conflict reconstruction in Gaza".
Sugiono further reaffirmed Indonesia's role in the board's peacekeeping mission on Friday, a day after President Prabowo Subianto pledged to deploy "up to 8,000 or more" Indonesian troops to Gaza at the BoP inaugural meeting in Washington on Thursday.
"This is a force assigned under a mandate to maintain peace, composed of various elements whose core duty is to maintain stability," he told reporters in Washington on Friday local time, as quoted from a video statement from the Presidential Secretariat.
Indonesia was named deputy commander for the ISF during Thursday's inaugural meeting. Under the current structure, the US serves as the force commander and is supported by three deputies.
[RA::Indonesia to take deputy commander role in Gaza force: US general:/world/2026/02/20/indonesia-to-take-deputy-commander-role-in-gaza-force-us-general.html]
The ISF is projected to deploy up to 20,000 troops and 12,000 police officers across five sectors in Gaza in the long term, with Indonesian forces expected to be stationed in Rafah, the southernmost sector bordering Egypt.
Sugiono's remarks came as doubts continued to mount over the BoP's peacekeeping operations, with lawmakers calling for more details about the troops' deployment.
"The possibility of the troops brushing up against resistance forces in Gaza is very high and should not be taken lightly," lawmaker Syamsu Rizal of the House of Representatives Commission I overseeing defense and foreign affairs said on Friday on Instagram.
Concerns, condemnations
Beyond planned troop operations, Sugiono also said that Jakarta, representing other countries in the Developing 8, had sent a formal letter to the board expressing concern over the latest developments in Palestine.
"It's not a [letter of] criticism, but our concern about the situation that's happening there and what kind of situation we want to see so that everything runs according to this peace proposal," he said.
Israeli forces have in recent weeks continued to launch air strikes on Gaza, while its cabinet recently moved to designate large tracts of land in the occupied West Bank as "state land", a step widely viewed as paving the way for expanded settlement activity and potential annexation.
Indonesia also joined a dozen Muslim-majority countries in condemning remarks by US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, who suggested in a Friday episode of US political commentator Tucker Carlson's podcast that Israel had a biblical right to vast Middle Eastern territories.
In a joint statement released by the United Arab Emirates' foreign ministry on Sunday, Indonesia and other Muslim nations denounced the US diplomat's comments as "dangerous and inflammatory" and contravening the United Nations Charter and efforts to deescalate the Gaza war, AFP reported.