Indonesia will convert a medical facility on an uninhabited island to treat about 2,000 wounded residents of Gaza, according to a spokesperson for the president.
“Indonesia will give medical help for about 2,000 Gaza residents who became victims of war, those who are wounded, buried under debris,” the spokesperson, Hasan Nasbi, told reporters in Jakarta on Thursday.
Indonesia plans to allocate the facility on Galang island, home to a former refugee camp for Vietnamese asylum seekers which lies off its island of Sumatra, to treat the wounded Gaza residents and temporarily shelter their families, he said.
The patients would be taken back to Gaza after they had healed, he added, without providing further details on the timing of the plan, or how their return would be guaranteed.
Muslim-majority Indonesia has sent humanitarian aid to Gaza after Israel started an offensive in October 2023 that Gaza health officials say has killed more than 60,000 Palestinians.
The announcement follows a report by Axios in July that the director of Israel’s Mossad spy agency had visited Washington to seek US help in convincing several countries, including Indonesia, Libya and Ethiopia, to take in hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from Gaza.
The three countries mentioned reportedly expressed an “openness to receiving large numbers of Palestinians from Gaza”.
A spokesperson for the Indonesian foreign ministry unequivocally denied the report to the Guardian at the time, saying the government “had never discussed such a plan with anybody”.
This week’s announcement also comes months after an offer from Indonesia’s president Prabowo Subianto to shelter wounded Palestinians drew criticism from Indonesia’s top clerics for seeming too close to US president Donald Trump’s suggestion of permanently moving Palestinians out of Gaza.
Trump vowed in February that the US would “take over” war-ravaged Gaza, after which it would be transformed into the “Riviera of the Middle East”.
Buya Anwar Abbas, the deputy chair of Indonesia’s Ulema Council, warned Indonesians in April to be wary of Prabowo’s offer.
“Learning from history, Indonesia must be smart in dealing with Israel’s manoeuvres. We must not allow our country to be deceived,” he said.
If medical aid is needed for Gaza residents affected by Israel’s recent attacks, he argued that treatment should take place in Gaza, not elsewhere.
“As a nation that endured 350 years of colonisation, we must recognise that occupiers have countless tricks and deceptions. We must not fall for their sweet words,” he said.
Another senior leader from Indonesia’s largest Muslim organisations, Nahdlatul Ulama, Rais Syuriah, also questioned the motive of the plan.
“Is there a guarantee they can return to Gaza? Aren’t there many Palestinians out there who still can’t return home?” he asked, “This could actually make it easier for Israel to occupy more Palestinian land.”
Indonesia’s foreign ministry, which backs a two-state solution to resolve the Middle East crisis, said at the time it “strongly rejects any attempt to forcibly displace Palestinians”.
A hospital to treat victims of the Covid-19 pandemic opened in 2020 on Galang, which had been until 1996 a sprawling refugee camp run by the United Nations, housing 250,000 of those who fled the Vietnam war.
