Let us not get our hopes too high. Never underestimate the challenges in finding peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Nevertheless, Indonesia should use all its powers and influence, and its great wealth of diplomatic experience, in peace-making, to find a lasting solution to the conflict.

The July 19 ICJ advisory is the most sweeping from a global legal body in recognizing the rights of the Palestinian people. Besides declaring Israel’s presence and policies in the occupied territories illegal, it calls on Israel to dismantle the illegal settlements, to return to the Palestinians lands confiscated after the 1967 war, and to pay compensation to the Palestinian people.

The ICJ opinion may not be binding, but it carries huge moral imperatives for members of the United Nations, including Indonesia, to act and ensure that it is observed.

Not surprisingly, Israel has rejected the advisory, as has the United States, the chief protector of the Jewish state. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traveled to Washington last week to address Congress, highlighting that he enjoys bipartisan support in the US.

Whoever wins the race to the White House in November, we can be sure that it is not going to affect Washington’s Israel policy, despite growing support among the American public, including in leading college campuses, for the US to put pressure on Israel to end its genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip and in the West Bank area.

The US government’s unflinching support for Israel has undermined its credentials as an honest broker in the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Is it any wonder that the two-state solution, which it helped broker in 2000, has hardly progressed? With US support, Israel has built more settlements such that the solution becomes more like a ruse to buy it time to expand its territory.

The ICJ advisory is also not going to change the situation on the ground. The Israeli military continues with its operation to destroy Gaza. It has killed nearly 40,000 people, mostly children and women, displaced over 1 million people. Harassment of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank has also escalated. If anything, Israel has become even more brutal.

Still, the ICJ gives the Palestinian people, and their international supporters, a glimmer of hope, at least on the diplomatic front. This is where Indonesia comes in.

Whatever Indonesian diplomats have done in the past in fighting for an independent Palestinian state, this is the time to step up. More countries are now recognizing the state of Palestine, and there is now ground support for elevating its status from observer status to become a full member of the United Nations General Assembly.

The absence of diplomatic ties with Israel is proving to be a big handicap for Indonesia to play a more active role in peace mediation. With no means of direct communication, Indonesia is effectively precluded from playing the role of an honest broker. But this is a conscious choice Jakarta has made, that it will not recognize the state of Israel until after the creation of an independent state of Palestine.

Irrespective of having relations or not with Israel, Indonesia must do its utmost within the space it has, to help find a lasting solution. That space has widened with Indonesia now recognized as a middle power.

Peace will not come overnight, but Indonesia must not relent, and use every opportunity presented to take that cause further, even if it means one step at a time. The ICJ advisory opinion offers that opportunity.