Empty Diplomacy: President Prabowo, the Two-State Solution, and Palestine’s Dead End

From Indonesian Perspective

When President Prabowo Subianto delivered his speech at the United Nations General Assembly, his words sought to rekindle hope. He spoke of justice for Palestine and, echoing decades of diplomatic ritual, mentioned the Two-State Solution. From the podium, the phrase carried the familiar promise of peace and compromise. Peeling back the layers, a disquieting question emerges: is this “solution” truly a road to peace, or merely a hollow chant masking occupation, apartheid, and genocide?

The story of Palestine is one of wounds deeply ingrained in the fabric of the 20th century. Since the 1948 Nakba—when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were driven from their homes to make way for Israel—the land has shrunk, the people dispersed, and sovereignty denied. The 1947 UN Partition Plan awarded 55 percent of historic Palestine to Israel and 45 percent to Palestinians. Indonesia, alongside many nations of the Global South, opposed that plan. Today, irony has sharpened into tragedy: Palestinians cling to less than 15 percent of their ancestral land, much of it fragmented and in ruins. If the earlier partition was already rejected as unjust, how could today’s far more lopsided compromise be taken seriously?

Diplomacy, in this case, has become a theater staged on a grossly uneven playing field. Israel comes to the table with unmatched military strength, backed by the political, financial, and military guarantees of the United States and Europe. It controls land, sea, air, borders, and even the minutiae of Palestinian daily life. Palestinians, meanwhile, arrive shackled. Access to water, electricity, fuel, food, and medicine is often dictated by Israeli authorities. To call such talks “negotiations” is to abuse the very meaning of the word. It is not bargaining—it is submission under duress. In blunt terms, it is a compromise at gunpoint.

And outside those rooms where diplomats craft careful speeches, the ground reality screams otherwise. In Gaza, relentless bombardments flatten entire neighborhoods. In the West Bank, settlements continue to expand, eating into whatever land remains. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have not minced words: Israel practices apartheid. The figures are staggering—thousands of civilians dead, children killed in their homes or buried beneath rubble, and hospitals and schools reduced to ashes. This issue is not “conflict,” as the term is often sanitized in the West. The result is systemic violence, amounting to crimes against humanity. To speak of two states amid such devastation is to close one’s eyes to the blood and rubble that define Palestinian life today.

Even if such a solution were realized, what kind of state would Palestine become? Would it hold genuine sovereignty, or would it be a patchwork of enclaves, forever surveilled, surrounded, and constrained by Israel? Would the right of return for millions of Palestinian refugees be honored, or permanently erased from the international agenda? A Palestinian flag may be raised, but without borders, freedom of movement, or control over resources, such a state would be little more than a symbolic entity—a phantom sovereignty in name only.

This is where President Prabowo’s rhetoric at the UN becomes problematic. His call for “justice” may be well-intentioned and politically expedient. Indonesia has long claimed a moral high ground in supporting Palestine, drawing on its anti-colonial legacy and its refusal to recognize Israel. But to stop at the two-state solution, without acknowledging the entrenched structures of colonization and apartheid, risks aligning Indonesia with the very diplomatic stagnation it once rejected. In effect, Indonesia’s voice risks blending into the chorus of Western powers who, for decades, have preached peace while financing occupation.

The world does not lack alternatives. Decolonization, dismantling of apartheid, and restorative justice are concepts rooted in both historical precedent and moral clarity. South Africa, once under the chokehold of apartheid, did not reach peace by creating two separate states but by confronting systemic inequality head-on. Similarly, some intellectuals and activists now advocate for a single democratic state in historic Palestine—one where all citizens, Jews and Arabs alike, live under equal rights. Critics dismiss the idea as utopian, but in truth, it is no more fantastical than believing that Israel would suddenly grant Palestinians a viable sovereign state.

Yet here lies the core problem: Israel has never shown a genuine intent to recognize Palestine’s independence. The Gaza blockade continues to suffocate daily life. Annexation of the West Bank accelerates under the guise of “security needs.” Al-Aqsa Mosque, one of Islam’s holiest sites, faces repeated incursions and desecrations. Each year, “peace talks” come and go, but the on-the-ground reality tilts ever further in Israel’s favor. To cling to the two-state formula in 2025 is to adhere to a diplomatic corpse long buried by facts on the ground.

This exposes a harsh truth: the two-state solution functions less as a roadmap than as a rhetorical tool. It offers international leaders a safe vocabulary—language that signals moral concern without demanding confrontation with the structures of occupation. It is a slogan, not a solution. And slogans, however polished, do not stop bulldozers, missiles, or the slow suffocation of an entire people.

What Palestine needs is not the symbolism of flags and seats at the UN. It needs justice. And justice is inseparable from truth-telling. Occupation must be named as occupation. Apartheid must be named as apartheid. Genocide must be recognized for what it is. Anything less is complicity dressed in the garb of diplomacy.

For Indonesia, this moment carries particular weight. As a nation built on anti-colonial struggle, as a country that once stood against the 1947 Partition Plan, its moral authority lies in consistency. To parrot hollow formulas risks eroding that authority. If Jakarta wishes to remain faithful to its historical stance, it must resist the trap of “empty peace” and push instead for structural change: ending the occupation, dismantling apartheid, and restoring the full rights of the Palestinian people.

In the end, history will not remember how many times world leaders uttered the phrase “two-state solution.” It will remember whether they dared to confront injustice at its roots. Palestine’s struggle is not for half a homeland or a compromised sovereignty. It is for freedom in the truest sense of the word—a freedom that no hollow diplomacy can deliver, but that must be won through justice, truth, and the dismantling of colonial domination.