Indonesia leader offers 20,000 troops for post-war Gaza

Prabowo Subianto Photographer: Bay Ismoyo/AFP/Getty Images

Indonesia’s leader on Tuesday offered to send at least 20,000 troops as peacekeepers to Gaza to safeguard any future peace deal.

Addressing the UN General Assembly, Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto said that the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country wanted a peace that shows that “might cannot make right.”

“We believe in the UN. We will continue to serve where peace needs guardians -- not with just words, but with boots on the ground,” he said.

“If and when the UN Security Council and this great Assembly decide, Indonesia is prepared to deploy 20,000 or even more of our sons and daughters to help secure peace in Gaza,” he said.

He said that Indonesia was also willing to send peacekeepers elsewhere including in Ukraine, Sudan or Libya.

The United States and Arab states have been speaking for months, but to little avail, about a post-war plan in Gaza which has been devastated by two years of Israeli attacks in response to an assault by Hamas.

Israel has repeatedly demanded the destruction of Hamas. Its latest offensive seeks to take over the largest urban center of Gaza City, but previous proposals have called for foreign powers to take over the territory’s security.

France and Saudi Arabia, in a resolution adopted by the vast majority of the General Assembly, called for a temporary international mission to stabilize Gaza as part of a ceasefire.