On Thursday, Israel celebrates its 60th anniversary while the prospect of a Palestinian state remains as uncertain as ever. The Jakarta Post's Tony Hotland interviewed Foreign Minister Hassan Wirayuda on Indonesia's role in a peace process Monday in Jakarta. Following are excerpts from the interview.

Question: Indonesia is a staunch supporter of a Palestinian state. How do you see the state materializing?

Answer: First of all, we hope the series of dialogues and negotiations launched by the (U.S.-hosted) Annapolis conference in November last year will lead to a peace agreement. It needs to be understood that this is not an easy process.

For us, with Indonesia taking part in that conference and making contributions toward peace, what matters is to revive the process of dialogue. This is from what we've witnessed in the past few years with more and more civilians getting killed. The retaliation by Palestine has come out of the politics of despair. When you are attacked daily with bombs and rockets, you fight back.

That's why we supported the Annapolis dialogue, and we're happy it's proving fruitful. That's why we were also there at the Paris conference on providing economic support for Palestinians (in December 2007). Anything, however little, that we can do for Palestinians, we will do.

The conflict between Palestine and Israel is severely protracted. Is there any light at the end of the tunnel?

We can see ... with the big wars in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973, that efforts to resolve the conflict with military measures have been fruitless on both sides. Even Israel, which won those wars, has not had peace at home.

I believe both sides, for their own reasons, have the need to bring this conflict to an end. There's light at the end of the tunnel. If what they've been doing for the past 60 years hasn't resolved anything, what's available? Dialogue and negotiation.

But despite all the years of tough dialogues, the peace process is not going anywhere. How do you see this?

The process of peace is as difficult as the process of war. And the risks of this aren't light, either.

There are already the parameters, the standards for conflict resolution between Israel and Palestine, the resolutions 242 and 338 of the UN Security Council. There are points that were agreed to by the affected parties, including the Quartet (the UN, the EU, Russia and the United States). These points have been accepted by the international community.

The problem is how to implement these resolutions on the ground. And that is through negotiations.

Hamas and Israel could never sit together, let alone negotiate. Under these circumstance how can they resolve their differences?

I always say that you must never set up conditions. That's where we're different from the European countries which set up conditions to negotiate with Hamas. That's not a dialogue. You may not be compatible with Hamas, but they're significant. They rose to the top of power through a democratic election, which was witnessed by the Carter Foundation and EU observers. They have a following and support, so they can't be dismissed.

In a democracy, indeed you share the power. But how do you do that when there's no power? How do you do that when you're still under foreign military occupation? That's what I told them, as a good friend. From our experience of hundreds of years of colonization, you cannot win independence by going alone. You must go as Palestine rather than as Hamas and Fatah.

While these dialogues are underway, civilians on both sides continue becoming victims of daily battles. What are your thoughts on this?

The ideal is, of course, that peace must be accompanied by the creation of a conducive environment. That's why we call on all sides to practice restraint so there won't be any attacks or retaliation.

The problem is the weak government in Palestine, with the Hamas-Fatah spat, and the weak coalition in Israel. This situation means there's no authority in charge of installing order, which causes disruptions in the peace process.

Second, there's a need to build a constituency comprising all elements in Palestine and Israel who are pro-peace. This is the difference with the Camp David process. The negotiators will feel that they have a strong backing. They won't be comfortable negotiating if there's no support.

What about the UN role, especially the Security Council?

They're part of the Quartet. When the Quartet was established, I thought the Arab League should've been a part of it. I questioned this Quartet. Is Palestine a business only to the Quartet? No. They made a roadmap, they held dialogues and expected us just to sit around. How come no Middle East figures are in the Quartet? They have little sensitivity about what happens every day in that region, but the Arab countries deal with this.

When I made my speech in Annapolis, I said there was no progress between 2002 and 2007. Only the politics of despair. Factions in Palestine or southern Lebanon took law into their own hands, (leading to) rockets being sent off, the retaliation, the thousands of fatalities. It was hard for me to see the Security Council doing nothing for months when their job is to maintain international peace and stability. And Israel was given free hands to kill.

Now the Quartet has somewhat been sidelined with the Annapolis process where Israel and Palestine are both under U.S. supervision. Other countries were invited, as well as at the Paris conference. Our part is how to make contributions toward a conducive situation.

What are our contributions?

For us, our support is mandated in the Constitution. Independence is the right of all nations, and colonization should be eliminated because it's against humanity and justice. We support Palestine to be a state in their area and live peacefully side by side with Israel. Not only because we both have large Muslim populations, but also because we're both multi-dimensional.

There are practical things rather than political that we can do to anticipate the creation of a Palestinian state. We can help them in technical cooperation.

That's why we tried to court support through the Asia-Africa conference on capacity building for Palestine, on fields that to many of us may seem trivial such as the training of government workers.

We have two ongoing programs with them without having to wait for the creation of a Palestinian state. One of them is training for diplomats. If they need training for police, we have a center for that. For doctors and administrative workers too.

Sure, we'll contribute at the high political level, but these are the concrete things.

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