Jakarta. Chief diplomats of Indonesia and the US recently discussed Jakarta’s plan to temporarily evacuate some Gazans into the Southeast Asian country.  

Foreign Affairs Minister Sugiono is currently in Washington DC as part of the high-level delegation that will lobby with the US government over its reciprocal tariffs. His first order of business was meeting US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday local time. A ministerial statement revealed that their meeting did not only revolve around Indonesia’s ongoing economic reforms, something that Jakarta had offered to appease US President Donald Trump. The bilateral talks also touched on the controversial evacuation plan. President Prabowo Subianto not long ago proposed that Indonesia could shelter at least 1,000 Gazans, comprising the wounded and those orphaned by the war, for the time being until it is safe enough for them to return. 

“The Indonesian government is ready to evacuate around 1,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, including the injured, to receive medical treatment in Gaza. They will then be returned to Gaza afterwards,” Sugiono said. 

He also told Rubio that Indonesia still disapproves of any attempt to relocate the Palestinians out of their homeland.

The ministerial press statement did not say how Rubio responded to the plan. Rubio’s spokesperson Tammy Bruce also did not mention the evacuation plan, let alone the situation in the war-torn enclave in her readout. However, Bruce said the two foreign ministers “underscored the importance of continuing to advance our partnership.” 

Prabowo’s Gaza evacuation plan drew criticisms from Muslim groups, especially since the proposal came at a time when Indonesia was trying to negotiate the tariffs. Buya Anwar Abbas, the deputy chairman of the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI), said he feared the evacuation plan could de-populate Gaza, making the strip extremely prone to being taken over by Israeli forces. Indonesia’s largest Islamic group, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), also made a similar remark. Muslim organization Muhammadiyah said that the government should make thorough considerations first.

Last week, Sugiono issued a clarification, saying that Indonesia had no intention of moving the Palestinians out of their homeland. Indonesia also seeks to consult with the Palestinian authorities and other countries in the region before actually evacuating the people. The minister said that Indonesia had yet to decide when it would actually bring the Palestinians, citing that the process would also require technical preparations. 

Early this year, Trump’s team proposed a plan to relocate some 2 million Palestinians elsewhere, with Indonesia listed as one of the possible host countries. Indonesia denied at the time such reports, with Sugiono’s spokesman Rolliansyah “Roy” Soemirat saying that the government “had never received any information about this”. Indonesia also dismissed recent Hebrew media reports that it was in talks to have some Gazans take up construction jobs in the country.

Local authorities reported that Israeli forces had killed at least 51,065 people and wounded 116,505 in Gaza since the conflict heightened on Oct. 7, 2023.