Indonesia plans to convert a medical facility on its currently uninhabited Galang Island to treat about 2,000 wounded Gaza residents, who will return home once recovered, a presidential spokesperson announced Thursday.
As a Muslim-majority nation, Indonesia has actively sent humanitarian aid to Gaza following Israel’s October 2023 offensive, which Gaza health officials say has claimed more than 60,000 Palestinian lives, including fighters and civilians.
“Indonesia will provide medical care for approximately 2,000 Gaza residents injured or trapped under debris due to the war,” spokesperson Hasan Nasbi told reporters, emphasizing that this is a medical aid mission, not an evacuation.
Indonesia plans to allocate the facility on Galang Island, off its Sumatra coast and south of Singapore, to treat wounded Gaza residents and temporarily shelter their families, he said, adding that no one currently lives nearby.
The patients would be taken back to Gaza after they have healed, he said.
Hasan did not provide a timeframe or further details, referring questions to Indonesia’s foreign and defense ministries, which did not immediately respond to 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 U.S. President Donald Trump’s suggestion of permanently relocating Palestinians out of Gaza.
In response to Trump’s suggestion, Indonesia’s foreign ministry, which backs a two-state solution to resolve the Middle East crisis, said it “strongly rejects any attempt to forcibly displace Palestinians.”
A hospital to treat COVID-19 victims opened in 2020 on Galang, which had been, until 1996, a sprawling refugee camp run by the United Nations, housing 250,000 people who fled the Vietnam War.
