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ndonesia has been called on to be an active peacemaker in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by facilitating communication between the two countries to reach a settlement.

As Indonesia starts its two-year tenure as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council in 2019, it is expected to take on an active role in the peacemaking process by opening up talks with Israel, in addition to strengthening its ties with Palestine.

“Indonesia, which is a huge country with tremendous potential for leadership around the world, is now a growing power. But it is currently a rather passive critic [of Israel],” director of public affairs at the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Philip Rosenberg, said on Wednesday in Jakarta.

He acknowledged that there were things to criticize about Israel, but said if Indonesia did nothing to end the conflict, the situation would not change.

“The Palestinians may be more open to trusting a Muslim-majority country [in Indonesia]. Israel certainly has interests in opening up a relationship with Indonesia if there is a positive outcome,” he said at the seventh biennial World Peace Forum (WPF).

“I think Indonesia could benefit from relationships with Israel as well as Palestine.”

He further said Israel tended to be inward looking because it felt that it was surrounded by hostile environments and pressured by many countries. Indonesia could therefore play a leading role in helping Israel to open up to the world and move toward peace, he added.

Rosenberg said his organization was supportive of Israel being a Jewish state despite disagreeing to “some words in the new law” because Israel was “a modern miracle after thousands of years of persecution of Jewish communities around the world”. Now, he said, Jews were able to affirm their identity and heritage.

Israeli Knesset ratified in July a law that emphasizes the country’s Jewish heritage by referring to the capital as a “unified Jerusalem” and Hebrew as the official language. Arabic, which previously also an official language, was downgraded to a language with “special status”.

The law has been widely criticized, including by the opposition, as it is deemed to be discriminatory.

Rosenberg further said that his organization, nonetheless, based its thinking about Israel around four key pillars: peace, security, prosperity and equality, thus supporting the two-state solution as it would not only ensure Israel’s independence but also create peace in the region.

Separately, David Shlomo Rosen, a rabbi and international director at the American Jewish Committee’s (AJC) Department of Interreligious Affairs, said Israel had been a Jewish state since the beginning.

Rosen, who also attended the WPF, said the new law was “simply reiterating” Israel’s declaration of independence, which affirmed democracy and equality for all minorities.

“This new law does not say ‘it is not’, but ‘it is not good enough’. It means to affirm that the minorities [have] equal rights [...]. So the law make no difference for any minority. Muslims, Christians, Jews, all are equal before the law,” he said, noting that 20 percent of Israeli parliament members were Arabs, most of whom were Muslims.

He said the law was meant to strengthen Jewish nationalist interests, “and, in my opinion, there needs to be another law that reaffirms the democratic freedoms and the rights of minorities in Israel. Or this law needs to be changed so that matters are emphasized, because it is not what’s in the law that is the problem, it’s what’s not in the law that is the problem.”

Meanwhile, adviser to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Mahmoud Sudqi Al-Habbas, expressed skepticism over recent negotiations between Israel and Hamas, the de facto governing authority of the Gaza Strip, and said they were dangerous for Palestinian independence efforts.

The outcome of the negotiations, he said, could not be considered a Palestinian decision because Hamas did not represent the Palestinian government.

“We heard the news about the negotiations. But we stressed that, in declaring Palestinian independence, it is only the government, the Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO], that can be trusted,” Habbash said at a press conference at the Palestinian Embassy in Jakarta.

“Hamas is an important group and is recognized in Palestine, but they remain under the umbrella of the PLO. It is very dangerous if Israel negotiates clandestinely with some Palestinians because it can destroy Palestinian unity itself,” he said through an interpreter.

The talks, initiated by the United Nations and Egypt, were carried out in early August.