IF DIPLOMACY is a theatre of the absurd, the latest act in the West Bank is a masterclass. On February 16, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres launched a rhetorical broadside against Israel’s decision to register vast swathes of Area C—territory internationally recognised as occupied—as its own “state land.” For the UN, this is a flagrant erosion of the “Two-State Solution.” For the rest of us, it looks like a real estate heist being formalised under the guise of administrative paperwork.
The move follows a May 2025 cabinet decision that seems to have been ticking away like a bureaucratic time bomb. Stephane Dujarric, Guterres’s spokesperson, was clear: this is a violation of international law. But in the boardrooms of Washington and the meeting rooms of Jakarta, the reaction is likely to be measured by a very different metric: the price of admission to the “Board of Peace.”
The “State Land” Sleight of Hand
By reclassifying occupied territory as “state land,” Israel is essentially trying to bypass the messy optics of “annexation” by using the cleaner language of “registration.” It is a strategic move that complicates any future peace deal by creating “facts on the ground” that are increasingly impossible to erase. For a global community already exhausted by territorial disputes, this is another layer of complexity added to a conflict that is already suffocating under its own history.
Jakarta’s Balancing Act
For President Prabowo’s administration, Guterres’s condemnation is an inconvenient reminder of the “altar of moral leadership” we are currently neglecting. As a member of the “Board of Peace” and a budding “Strategic Trader,” Indonesia is trying to find a way to condemn the land grab without upsetting the delicate transactional balance it is building in Washington.
One can almost hear the clicking of calculators in Hambalang: How many “standard condemnations” can we issue before it affects our credit rating at the Board of Peace? It is a dangerous game where the territorial integrity of Palestine is being weighed against the industrial kelangsungan hidup (survival) of Indonesia.
The tragedy of the West Bank is that while the UN issues press releases, the borders are being redrawn in permanent ink. Jakarta may be enjoying its new seat at the global table, but Guterres has just reminded us that the room is filled with stolen furniture.
Further reading: Related analysis
The Washington Gambit: Jakarta’s Pragmatism on Eroding Ground
