On 23 September 2025, Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto offered an audacious speech to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). Reiterating Indonesia’s commitment to the two-state solution in the Israel–Palestine conflict, he gave the expected overtures from the largest Muslim-majority country in the world toward the plight of Gazans and the need for humanitarian support. However, it came with a twist: “We must also recognise, we must also respect, and we must also guarantee the safety and security of Israel. Only then we can have real peace.” In a time when leaders of Arab and Muslim-majority countries are competing to offer the strongest condemnation of Israel’s purported genocide in Gaza, President Prabowo chose to strike a more balanced tone, to the surprise of domestic and international observers.
This raises the question: what has caused Indonesia’s divergence in rhetoric on Israel–Palestine from the rest of the Muslim world at the UNGA, especially considering not even a year ago it was one of the strongest pro-Palestinian voices on the international stage? I argue the answer lies in the Indonesian government’s successful handling of Islamist forces that have held authoritative sway over a key ideological commitment—Indonesia’s steadfast support for Palestine.
From advocacy to conciliation
Former president Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s administration was one of the strongest champions of the Palestinian cause, especially since the horrific attacks of 7 October 2023 and Israel’s ensuing brutal war against Hamas. Jokowi’s foreign policy team dedicated significant rhetorical energy to demonstrate Indonesia’s support for the Palestinians during the Gaza war, making the country one of the leaders in the pro-Palestinian cause in the Global South and the Islamic world during his administration.
Jokowi and his foreign minister Retno Marsudi were leading advocates for Palestine and some of the strongest critics of Israel in the international fora. Right after the 7 October attacks, Jokowi cited Israel’s 56-year occupation of Palestinian territory as the root cause of the conflict, rather than explicitly condemning Hamas for killing civilians and holding Israelis hostage. During a bilateral meeting with Joe Biden on 13 November 2023, Jokowi implicitly criticised American support for Israel’s assault on Gaza: “So, Indonesia appeals to the US to do more to stop the atrocities in Gaza. Ceasefire is a must for the sake of humanity.” In her last appearance to the UNGA in September 2024, former foreign minister Retno gave a particularly scathing speech on the injustice enacted by Israel on the Palestinians. She expressed scepticism about Israel’s commitment to peace, reiterated Indonesia’s solidarity with Palestine, and called the international community to exert pressure on Israel until it reverts to the two-state solution.
The positions expressed by Prabowo as president stand in contrast with his predecessor’s. Despite having Jokowi’s son Gibran Rakabuming Raka as his vice president, Prabowo has diverged from the previous administration on Israel-Palestine both in rhetoric and policy. Not only is Prabowo taking a personalistic and flexible approach to Indonesia’s international relations, but he has also demonstrated a pragmatic departure from the deeply institutionalised ways in which Indonesia’s foreign policy establishment has traditionally expressed its position on Palestine.
President Prabowo’s shifting tone on Israel—from condemnation to conciliation—demonstrates Indonesia’s increasing pragmatism and flexibility on the issue. This redirection was first signalled in a news conference during French President Emmanuel Macron’s official state visit to Indonesia in May 2025. Prabowo said, “We must acknowledge and guarantee Israel’s rights as a sovereign country that must be paid attention to and guaranteed safety. Indonesia has stated that once Israel recognises Palestine, Indonesia is ready to recognise Israel and open the diplomatic relationship.” While the position is not new at all within Indonesia’s commitment to the two-state international consensus, this sentiment was in contrast with what the country had signalled in the prior administration. Prabowo’s September speech to the UNGA further reinforced this shift, especially since fellow leaders of Muslim-majority countries, the Global South, and certain Western countries continued to criticise Israel in the harshest terms.
On top of the rhetorical shift, Prabowo has attempted to align Indonesia with US-allied Arab states such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, on brokering peace between Israel and the Palestinians. On 13 October 2025, Prabowo visited Egypt to partake in the Gaza Peace Summit, which brought together 20 world leaders led by Donald Trump in an effort to bring a permanent ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in the hope of ending the two-year Gaza war. It was notable that Indonesia was the only Southeast Asian country represented in the summit, and that the invitation was reportedly unexpected by the president—underscoring Prabowo’s efforts to raise his country’s international profile, and to a certain extent, his success in doing so. The conciliatory stance he has shown has also led to speculation of normalisation with Israel as Israeli media reported that the president would visit Israel after the summit, which was swiftly denied by Foreign Minister Sugiono.
Indonesia’s marked change in tone and posture toward Israel in a time when Israel is becoming more isolated internationally is an extraordinary feat. Pro-Palestinian support elsewhere is reaching new heights and Indonesia has a long history of fighting for the cause, which is broadly popular domestically and is one of the issues uniting diverse political constituents. This begs the question: How was President Prabowo able to undertake a move that carried such high domestic political risk despite broad public alignment with the Palestinian cause?
The receding threat of Islamism
The answer lies in a significant domestic political transformation: the successful neutralisation of Indonesia’s hardline Islamist opposition. Whereas Jokowi was forced to adopt a defensive strategy of religious appeasement to protect his government, Prabowo has inherited a tamed political landscape from the Islamist threat. This has been achieved through a combination of Jokowi’s prior coercive and co-optative measures and Prabowo’s own pre-emptive coalition-building. Together these have blunted the Palestine issue as a weapon against the government and granted Prabowo unprecedented flexibility in Indonesia’s Middle East policy.
The high-profile support of Jokowi’s administration for Palestine on the global stage can be attributed not only to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ influential role in shaping his foreign policy, but also to a requirement that the former president himself felt he constantly required to demonstrate: his support for so-called Muslim political interests as defined by conservative Islamists. Jokowi, throughout his two terms, frequently faced scepticism and outright hostility from powerful conservative and Islamist groups who questioned his religious commitment, a dynamic which was amplified by the fallout from the 212 protests.
For Jokowi, a robust and highly visible foreign policy stance on Palestine—an issue that cuts across all political and religious divides and serves as a universally acknowledged Muslim cause—was a necessary tool to immunise himself from accusations of being insufficiently Islamic or aligned with anti-Islamic elements. His selection of Ma’ruf Amin, a conservative and high-profile cleric and chairman of the Islamic Ulema Council (MUI), as his running mate in 2019, and his consistent rhetorical defence of Palestine, can be understood as elements of a broader domestic strategy of religious appeasement. This was a form of political insurance against the spectre of Islamist mobilisation and the use of identity politics to destabilise his government.
The most salient demonstration of this defensive strategy was the government’s tacit, and at times explicit, endorsement of the massive pro-Palestinian rallies that swept Jakarta and other major cities in 2023 and 2024 following the intensification of the war in Gaza. These were not merely grassroots mobilisations; they were immense public gatherings, often involving hundreds of thousands of participants, where hardline Islamist groups marched side-by-side with figures from the ruling coalition such as former foreign minister Retno Marsudi and DPR Speaker Puan Maharani.
In a striking example, a November 2023 National Monument (Monas) rally saw officials from Islamic-oriented political parties and major Muslim organisations sharing the stage with leaders of more conservative, street-based Islamist movements. The inclusion of these hardline figures, who were granted a platform to voice their strongest condemnations of Israel and the US, was a deliberate political calculation. By allowing, and even facilitating, these unified public displays of solidarity, the Jokowi administration successfully co-opted the momentum of the pro-Palestine movement. The joint spectacle solidified Indonesia’s image as a global leader of the cause while simultaneously neutralising the potential threat of the issue being weaponised against Jokowi.
Furthermore, the Jokowi administration managed to contain, to a certain degree, the hardline elements of the Islamist political scene through a broader crackdown that included, among other measures, the use of legal instruments such as the Perppu Ormas. Following the 212 protests in 2016, Jokowi signed the Government Regulation in Lieu of a Law (Perppu) No. 2/2017, which enabled crackdowns on the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) and Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia (HTI)—two radical Islamist organisations—on grounds of their purported opposition to Pancasila, Indonesia’s pluralist state ideology.
This noticeably had a chilling effect on the political activities of Indonesian Islamists. The Islamic purification organisation Islamic Union (PERSIS) shifted its historical focus on pursuing Islamisation of the Indonesian state to soft Islamisation of lifestyles. The Indonesian Islamic Propagation Council (DDII), which had received extensive funding from Salafi- and/or Wahhabi-oriented Gulf patrons, has declined in organisational power due to the regulation’s tighter scrutiny of foreign funding. Following his re-election victory and Prabowo’s loss in 2019, radical Islamists, who violently protested the results, were effectively shut out from power or were successfully co-opted. The movement declined in influence in the latter years of Jokowi’s presidency, as hardliners’ biggest patron, Prabowo himself, joined Jokowi’s cabinet as defence minister.
In contrast, Prabowo as president has largely managed to prevent the formation of an Islamist opposition. His successful co-optation strategy began even before his electoral victory, securing endorsements from significant Islamic figures and institutions that had previously opposed him or were non-committal. Unlike Jokowi, Prabowo does not suffer from a credibility deficit with the Islamist constituency. His strong historical ties to conservative elements, cultivated over two previous presidential runs, combined with his strategic selection of an expansive cabinet and coalitional government that includes leaders from Islamic-oriented parties such as the Nahdlatul Ulama-affiliated National Awakening Party (PKB) and the Muslim Brotherhood-inspired Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), have effectively demobilised the pro-Palestine cause as a singular political weapon against the executive branch. By bringing these groups into the fold of power, Prabowo has transformed their potential role from external critics leveraging foreign policy to internal stakeholders.
As the major Islamist actors are now either invested in the success of the administration or have been successfully marginalised and demobilised, they are less inclined to use the Palestinian issue as a stick to beat the government. This domestic security allows Prabowo to exercise greater latitude on foreign policy matters, enabling the conciliatory shift observed at the UNGA and the subsequent overtures toward the US-led Gaza peace process.
The limits of conciliation
Prabowo’s softening toward Israel is a high-stakes balancing act with uncertain payoffs. The danger lies in shifting rhetoric toward recognising Israel’s security needs without any tangible diplomatic outcomes that advance Palestinian statehood. This olive-branch approach grants diplomatic space to Israel, which has a record of deepening settlement expansion and occupation—a pattern that continued even after the Abraham Accords. Should Donald Trump’s ceasefire “deal” fail (a likely scenario given the entrenched positions of the belligerents), Prabowo risks being perceived as having betrayed the Palestinian cause merely for external political validation that could quickly unravel due to circumstances beyond Indonesia’s control. Furthermore, Indonesia’s ambition to serve as a credible “honest broker” is constrained by its limited regional leverage, lacking the financial clout, direct diplomatic channels, and geographic proximity that allow states like Qatar, Egypt or Turkey to meaningfully shape negotiations.
This policy risk feeds directly into Indonesia’s most significant domestic vulnerability: the unpredictable reactivation of hardline Islamist mobilisation. The 212 protests of 2016 demonstrated how quickly dormant networks can scale when a unifying grievance emerges, blindsiding even a well-prepared government. The Palestinian cause remains one of the few issues capable of generating such cross-spectrum cohesion, reflected most recently in Sports Minister Erick Thohir’s decision to deny visas to Israeli gymnasts ahead of the 2025 world championship. If the administration’s pragmatic diplomacy is perceived as edging toward normalisation with a longstanding adversary, the currently quiescent hardline movement could rapidly regain political will and organisational capacity. In the politically fraught atmosphere following the August 2025 protests, a reactivation of Islamists with the element of surprise reminiscent of 212, is far from inconceivable.
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This post was originally published on New Mandala.