JAKARTA: Indonesia will convert a medical facility on its currently uninhabited island of Galang to treat about 2,000 wounded residents of Gaza, who will return home after recovery, a presidential spokesperson said on Thursday.
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, whether fighters or non-combatants.
“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, adding that the exercise was not an evacuation.
Indonesia plans to allocate the facility on Galang island, off its island of Sumatra and south of Singapore, to treat wounded Gaza residents and temporarily shelter their families, he said, adding that nobody lived around it now.
The patients would be taken back to Gaza after they had healed, he said.
Hasan did not give a timeframe or further details, referring questions to Indonesia’s foreign and defense ministries, which did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.
The plan comes months after President Prabowo Subianto’s offer 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.
In response to Trump’s suggestion, the foreign ministry of Indonesia, 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.
Indonesia readies island medical facility for 2,000 wounded Gazans
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Indonesia readies island medical facility for 2,000 wounded Gazans
- Indonesia will convert a medical facility on its currently uninhabited island of Galang to treat about 2,000 wounded residents of Gaza, who will return home after recovery
Bolivia and Israel to restore ties severed over the war in Gaza
- Paz's government eased visa restrictions on American and Israeli travelers last month
- The Bolivian foreign ministry said its top diplomat would meet his Israeli counterpart in Washington later Tuesday to discuss the revival of bilateral ties
LA PAZ, Bolivia: Bolivia's new right-wing government said Tuesday that it would restore diplomatic relations with Israel, the latest sign of the dramatic geopolitical realignment underway in the South American country that was once among the most vocal critics of Israeli policies toward Palestinians.
The Bolivian foreign ministry said its top diplomat would meet his Israeli counterpart in Washington later Tuesday to discuss the revival of bilateral ties, which Bolivia's previous left-wing government severed two years ago over Israel's devastating campaign against Hamas in Gaza.
Bolivia said the effort came as part of a new foreign policy strategy under conservative President Rodrigo Paz aimed at “rebuilding Bolivia's international prestige, opening new economic opportunities and strengthening alliances that directly benefit the country and our citizens abroad."
Bolivian Foreign Minister Fernando Aramayo is in the midst of a whirlwind trip to Washington for meetings with American officials as his government works to warm long-chilly relations with the United States and unravel nearly two decades of hard-line, anti-Western policies under the Movement Toward Socialism, or MAS, party that left Bolivia economically isolated and diplomatically allied with China, Russia and Venezuela.
Paz's government eased visa restrictions on American and Israeli travelers last month.
In announcing his expected meeting with Aramayo on Monday, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar thanked Bolivia for scrapping Israeli visa controls and said he spoke to Paz after the center-right senator's Oct. 19 election victory to express “Israel’s desire to open a new chapter” in relations with Bolivia.
Paz entered office last month, ending the dominance of the MAS party founded by Evo Morales, the charismatic former coca-growing union leader who became Bolivia's first Indigenous president in 2006. Not long after taking power, Morales sent Israel's ambassador packing and cozied up to Iran over their shared enmity toward the U.S. and Israel.
When protests over Morales' disputed 2019 reelection prompted him to resign under pressure from the military, a right-wing interim government took over and restored full diplomatic relations with the U.S. and Israel as it sought to undo many of Morales’ popular policies.
But 2020 elections brought the MAS party back to power with the presidency of Luis Arce, who in 2023 once again cut ties with Israel in protest over its military actions in Gaza.
Other left-wing Latin American countries, like Chile and Colombia, soon made similar moves, recalling their ambassadors and joining South Africa’s genocide case against Israel before the United Nations’ highest judicial body.
