UN Expert Warns Indonesia: Trump’s Gaza Board Erases Palestinian Power
JAKARTA — United Nations special rapporteur Francesca Albanese urged Indonesia on October 22 to reconsider its participation in Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace,” warning that the U.S.-led body is being shaped by Washington and Israel while denying Palestinians meaningful power over Gaza’s future.
HERO PHOTO — Francesca Albanese speaks at Portugal’s Parliament on July 27, 2024. Photo: Rafael Medeiros / Esquerda.net; adapted with a focal crop in the Pamphlets V9 card. CC BY-SA 2.0.
Indonesia’s Foreign Ministry said the same day that discussions over its participation remain on hold. President Prabowo Subianto has previously said Jakarta would leave the initiative if it failed to benefit Palestinians. That hesitation now sits beside a blunt legal and political challenge from the UN expert responsible for monitoring human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories.
“I understand Indonesia’s good intentions,” Albanese told Reuters in Jakarta. “I still think that it’s very dangerous, because it risks to normalise a very abnormal mechanism.”
A board without Palestinian power
Trump launched the board in January as a vehicle for addressing conflicts that normally fall within the UN system. Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority country and a longtime supporter of Palestinian statehood, agreed to join and pledged troops for an international stabilization force in Gaza. Those plans have stalled amid war, political opposition and the absence of a clear Israeli withdrawal.
The board says Palestinian “leadership and ownership” remain central. Its officials point to the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, a body of Palestinian professionals led by former Palestinian Authority official Ali Shaath, as evidence that Palestinians are involved in civilian administration and reconstruction.
Albanese rejected that defense. “Naming a few bureaucrats here and there is tokenism,” she said. She also warned that Indonesia could damage its historic relationship with Palestinians by joining a mechanism whose rules are shaped by Israel. “It’s very risky to do so when the rules are set by Israel,” she told Reuters.
That criticism reaches beyond one committee. A foreign board cannot claim to deliver self-determination while it reserves strategic authority for the states that armed, financed or executed Gaza’s destruction. Reconstruction without Palestinian sovereignty would turn devastation into a new instrument of control: outsiders would decide the terms of aid, security and political life while Palestinians carried the costs.
The power imbalance is not abstract. Trump chairs the board, Israel participates in it, and Palestinians have no equivalent political authority. Indonesia may hope to push the mechanism toward Palestinian interests from within, but participation also lends legitimacy to a structure that bypasses the people whose territory it proposes to govern.
ARCHIVE — Palestinians inspect damage after an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City’s Rimal district on October 9, 2023. Photo: Palestinian News & Information Agency (WAFA) / APAimages; display resized without content alteration. CC BY-SA 3.0.
Indonesia still has a choice
Albanese proposed a different path. She urged Jakarta to work through the Hague Group, the coalition that includes South Africa and neighboring Malaysia and seeks collective action to uphold international law and the institutions charged with enforcing it. In separate remarks reported by Tempo, she argued that Indonesia could help build a more decolonized form of multilateralism rather than adapt itself to a U.S.-designed substitute.
The contrast matters. The Hague Group begins from legal obligations and state accountability. Trump’s board concentrates authority in a political club and asks Palestinians to accept administration without equal power. One route strengthens universal rules; the other makes governance dependent on the interests of Washington and its allies.
Jakarta’s government says its membership aims to support Palestine. That goal will be judged by material outcomes, not diplomatic branding. If Indonesian participation cannot secure Palestinian representation, halt Israeli attacks, guarantee withdrawal and protect the right of Palestinians to determine their own future, then membership risks becoming cover for managed occupation.
Gaza’s crisis makes that test urgent. The 2025 ceasefire secured the release of the remaining Israeli hostages and hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and detainees, but efforts to disarm Hamas and achieve an Israeli withdrawal have faltered. Israeli forces continue near-daily attacks. A UN commission and international and Israeli rights groups have accused Israel of genocide; Israel denies the charge.
Indonesia does not have to choose between passivity and submission to Washington’s framework. It can use its diplomatic weight, its ties across the Muslim world and its own anti-colonial history to demand a process built around Palestinian agency and international law. Albanese’s warning makes the stakes plain: good intentions do not redeem a structure that excludes the people it claims to save.
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