By Aceng Syamsul Hadie, S.Sos., MM.
Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the DPP ASWIN (International Association of Journalists)
The emergence of proposals such as a so-called Board of Peace—designed outside the United Nations framework and reportedly centered on concentrated, unchecked authority—must be viewed with extreme caution. History teaches us that when peace is redefined by power rather than law, the result is not stability, but institutionalized injustice.
For Palestine, and especially for Gaza, this debate is not abstract. It goes to the core of whether the international community still believes in decolonization, self-determination, and the rule of law, or whether these principles are now negotiable commodities in a new geopolitical marketplace.
The repeated failure of the United Nations to protect the Palestinian people is often cited as justification for alternative peace mechanisms. This diagnosis is misleading. The problem is not the absence of international law; it is the systematic refusal of powerful states to uphold it. Occupation, collective punishment, forced displacement, and settlement expansion are already illegal under international law. What is missing is political will, not legal clarity.
Replacing multilateral institutions with power-centric arrangements does not correct this failure—it entrenches it.
Gaza today is frequently framed as a humanitarian tragedy. While this is true, it is also incomplete. Gaza is the product of a prolonged and illegal blockade, repeated military assaults, and a broader system of domination that denies Palestinians their most basic right: the right to determine their own future. Any peace initiative that avoids confronting this reality is not neutral; it is complicit.
Peace that ignores occupation does not resolve conflict—it normalizes it.
Under emerging “stability-first” approaches, Gaza risks being reduced to a managed space: rebuilt but controlled, pacified but politically amputated. This model reflects a modern form of neo-colonialism, where domination persists not through direct rule, but through security arrangements, economic dependency, and the erasure of sovereignty.
True peace cannot be imposed from above, nor outsourced to exclusive global clubs. It must rest on clear and non-negotiable principles: the end of occupation, the lifting of the blockade, international protection for civilians under legitimate UN mandates, recognition of the State of Palestine, and accountability for grave violations of international law.
For countries of the Global South, including Indonesia, this moment represents a profound moral test. Our historical commitment to anti-colonialism and justice cannot coexist with participation in peace frameworks that dilute liberation into mere “regional stability.” Non-alignment was never meant to be neutrality between the oppressor and the oppressed. It was meant to be independence from hegemonic designs.
Gaza does not need a new board to manage its suffering.
It needs freedom, dignity, and sovereignty.
Until the international community chooses justice over convenience and law over power, peace initiatives for Gaza will remain instruments of control rather than pathways to genuine liberation.[]