History has a long memory in Jakarta. In 1955, as newly decolonised nations gathered in Bandung, Indonesia placed Palestine at the moral heart of its foreign policy, not as a slogan but as a principle: freedom is indivisible. 

Seven decades later, that inheritance has returned with force, as Indonesia steps into one of the most contested diplomatic experiments of the post-Gaza war era. The decision by President Prabowo Subianto to sign on to the Trump-led Board of Peace in Davos has reopened an old question with new urgency: how does a principled middle power remain true to its history while navigating a deeply asymmetrical global order?

This moment is urgent: renewed UN Security Council debate and OCHA’s latest situation reports documenting new winter casualties and mass displacement make Gaza’s humanitarian emergency acute even as Davos launched a parallel Board of Peace process.

Indonesia’s relationship with Palestine is not transactional. It predates statehood, alliances, and global institutions. Palestinian leaders supported Indonesian independence in the 1940s, and Indonesia has never recognised Israel. That moral clarity has translated into sustained diplomatic action: support for UN resolutions, leadership in the Non-Aligned Movement, and consistent advocacy for a two-state solution. Today, Indonesia remains the world’s largest Muslim-majority democracy, home to more than 275 million people, and a country whose constitutional mandate explicitly commits it to global peace and social justice.

Against that backdrop, the Board of Peace arrives as both opportunity and provocation. Announced by US President Donald Trump at the World Economic Forum in January 2026, the Board claims to oversee Gaza’s ceasefire and reconstruction. Indonesia’s participation has been framed domestically as an attempt to shape outcomes from within, to ensure that Gaza’s future remains anchored in international law and Palestinian self-determination. The language is familiar, pragmatic, and rooted in Indonesia’s long-standing ‘free and active’ foreign policy tradition.

Yet the structure and symbolism of the Board raise profound unease. The official materials unveiled in Davos made almost no reference to Palestinians themselves. There was little acknowledgment of the scale of devastation: more than 70,000 Palestinians reported killed, around 95 per cent of Gaza’s population displaced, and critical infrastructure flattened, according to international agencies and regional reporting. UN teams on the ground report displaced families sleeping in flooded tents after winter storms, children suffering hypothermia and makeshift shelter sites ripped apart — images that a redevelopment brochure should never silence.

Instead, glossy plans spoke of ports, housing, and futuristic redevelopment, as........

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