Jakarta. Concerns over the Middle East conflicts are growing in the ASEAN region, even beating other geopolitical issues such as the South China Sea tensions, according to a report. 

Think-tank ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute recently launched its 2024 edition of the State of Southeast Asia survey report. The report provides a snapshot of how Southeast Asians perceive what their governments consider a top geopolitical concern, among other things. And data shows that the Middle East tension --particularly the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas -- rises to be the top geopolitical concern overall for the governments in the ASEAN region.

“The Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas on Israeli civilians and the ensuing humanitarian crisis in Gaza occupies the region’s mindshare [46.5 percent]. The second-ranked [geopolitical] concern is aggressive behavior in the South China Sea [39.9 percent],” the survey report reads. 

The individual ASEAN members, however, have different levels of concern about the tensions between Israel and Hamas. Muslim-majority countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei Darussalam tend to be more concerned about what is happening in the Middle East. 

About 83.1 percent of the Malaysian respondents picked the Israel-Hamas conflict as their country’s main geopolitical concern, followed by Brunei Darussalam (79.2 percent) and Indonesia (74.7 percent). Some 57.9 percent of the Singaporean respondents also considered their government highly concerned over the said conflict. 

But other governments have their minds elsewhere. As a case in point, Vietnam and the Philippines are mainly worried about the situation in the South China Sea, the report finds. Both countries are among the claimant states of the strategic waterway.

The survey had 1,994 respondents -- all coming from the 10 ASEAN member states.

The report, however, came out before the latest escalation of the Middle East tension: Iran’s retaliatory strike on Israel over the weekend. 

The respective ASEAN members have issued their country statements on the strike. Malaysia called Iran’s aerial attack a legitimate act, while Indonesia urged all parties to exercise self-restraint. Close neighbor Singapore condemned Iran’s attacks. The Philippines “expressed serious concerns” over the increasing tensions. 

Foreign Affairs Minister Retno Marsudi recently contacted her counterparts from other countries such as Germany, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan, among others, to use their influence to de-escalate the situation. She also already had a phone call with Iranian top diplomat Hossein Amir-Abdollahian.

ASEAN as a group has not come up with a joint statement regarding the Iranian drone attack. However, it took about two weeks since the Gaza conflict intensified after the Oct. 7 attack for the Southeast Asian bloc to issue a response. Then-chair Indonesia said at the time that the group’s members had already issued their individual statements.

“But among all the different national positions, we always have commonalities. We always try to find the middle ground that can be used as the ASEAN position. Because there were already individual statements of each country,” Retno said in Jakarta last October, commenting on why it took long for the Southeast Asian grouping to respond to the Gaza conflict.

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