JAKARTA,(Palestine Foundation Information Center) The Indonesian presidency announced Thursday that it is preparing a medical facility on the uninhabited island of Galang to receive and treat approximately 2,000 wounded Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. The facility will serve as a temporary center for medical care, after which the patients are expected to return to Gaza once they recover.
Presidential spokesman Hassan Nasbi told reporters, “Indonesia will provide medical assistance to about 2,000 Gaza residents, victims of the war, including the wounded and those pulled from the rubble,” emphasizing that “this initiative is not a displacement operation.”
Nasbi explained that the facility on Galang Island, located south of Singapore and off the coast of Sumatra, is currently uninhabited and thus suitable for temporary use to host the wounded and their accompanying family members.
He confirmed that the patients would return to the Gaza Strip after treatment, although he did not provide a detailed timeline for the initiative’s launch or completion. Questions about implementation were referred to Indonesia’s foreign and defense ministries, both of whom have yet to issue a response.
The plan follows an earlier proposal by President Prabowo Subianto to provide refuge and treatment for wounded Palestinians. That offer sparked criticism from senior Indonesian clerics who expressed concern that it resembled US President Donald Trump’s controversial plan to resettle Palestinians outside Gaza permanently.
At the time, Indonesia’s Foreign Ministry reiterated the country’s firm stance in support of a two-state solution and said it “strongly rejects any attempt to forcibly displace Palestinians.”
Galang Island previously hosted a sprawling refugee camp run by the United Nations until 1996, where around 250,000 people fleeing the Vietnam War once took shelter. The same site was later converted into a hospital for COVID-19 patients during the pandemic in 2020.
