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View all search resultsPreventing TNI peacekeeping in Gaza from becoming a suicide mission
As the President pushes to deploy a TNI peacekeeping mission to Gaza under the US-led Board of Peace, he risks walking into a neocolonial trap designed for profit instead of Palestinian welfare. Unless it is accompanied by a robust combat force to deter Israeli aggression, this humanitarian mission may quickly turn into a tragic delivery of body bags.
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Muslim women hold picket signs on Feb. 2, 2025, during a demonstration to show support for Palestinians and to demand the end of the war in Gaza in Surabaya, East Java. (AFP/Juni Kriswanto)
T
he unjust war against Iran launched by the United States and Israel has entered its fourth week without a clear off-ramp for the aggressors, resulting in significant losses.
Nobody thought Iran would last this long when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, born Mileikowski, coerced US President Donald Trump to start the war. They must have assumed that Iran would crumble instantly like a house of cards, much like they viewed Venezuela, a nation cowering before becoming another US underling.
Trump secured his oil from Venezuela, plenty of it. Then he eyed Iran’s oil and gas. But Iran is different, and Trump miscalculated: Iran has now blocked the Strait of Hormuz, much to his surprise. The US-Israeli attacks prove that neither country is trustworthy while marking yet another chapter in a long history of Tehran being cheated by Washington.
Despite the tensions in West Asia, President Prabowo Subianto remains on the Board of Peace (BoP), an international forum initiated by Trump to reconstruct, demilitarize and stabilize the Gaza Strip. Prabowo has argued that it is easier to champion Palestinian interests from within the system. He has also insisted that Indonesia will not pay the board’s US$1 billion membership fee after the free initial term of three years expires.
However, he remains adamant about sending the Indonesian Military (TNI) to help maintain peace in Gaza, though he briefly suspended the deployment due to the war on Iran. If he does, it will mark Indonesia’s engaging in an unprecedented peacekeeping mission as a private, commercial venture rather than as part of the United Nations’ Blue Helmets.
Despite the move being supported by the UN Security Council’s Resolution 2803 on the Gaza conflict, it is increasingly clear that the so-called reconstruction of Gaza does not serve the best interests of the territory’s residents or the Palestinian people as a whole. In fact, it appears designed to benefit external settlers turning Gaza into Trump’s personal dominion, a "Riviera of the Middle East" for the wealthy, while permanently displacing Gazans in another Nakba.
Trump, a businessman turned politician, seems inspired by Belgium’s King Leopold II, who ruled the Congo as his personal possession, ironically named as the "Congo Free State", with notorious brutality from 1885 to 1908. On paper, the BoP is the administrative power in Gaza, overseeing the so-called International Stabilization Force to which Indonesia has pledged 20,000 personnel.
