On January 19, 2025, countries around the world, including the member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), breathed a sigh of relief when a tentative ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas was announced by mediators—the United States, Egypt, and Qatar—hoping it would mean an end to the bloodshed. The most recent iteration of the nearly seven-decades-long conflict began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas launched an attack that killed 1,195 Israelis, and it has since resulted in more than 60,000 Palestinian casualties and the destruction of much of the Gaza Strip by the Israeli Defense Forces. Central to the conversation around the war has been the role of Washington, which, as Israel’s strongest ally, has provided the country with more than $17.9 billion in security assistance since October 2023.

Then-president-elect Donald Trump claimed credit for the deal, writing on Truth Social that it occurred as a result of his peace-seeking administration winning the November 2024 presidential election. However, the ceasefire agreement collapsed after his inauguration; the situation in Palestine has only worsened during a two-month-long Israeli blockade on humanitarian aid to Gaza. As President Trump embarked on a trip to the Gulf States in mid-May, it was not just Middle Eastern states that were closely watching the administration’s policy on Gaza, but also the countries of Southeast Asia, where many policymakers remain concerned with what will happen next. Several states—especially Muslim-majority Malaysia and Indonesia—have maintained a deep frustration with what they perceive as American-approved Israeli war tactics and, as of early February, with the Trump administration’s plan to “take over Gaza.”

In its first months in office, the Trump foreign policy team has tried to indicate that it is committed to continuing strong diplomatic efforts in the Indo-Pacific despite uncertainty on trade and security policies. In Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s first week in office, he spoke with his counterparts in three Southeast Asian countries—the Philippines, Indonesia, and Vietnam—where he raised concerns regarding China’s behavior in the South China Sea. However, if the Trump administration is committed to countering China in the region through strengthening diplomatic relations and military cooperation with Southeast Asian nations, it will have to address the concerns of those countries that are deeply angered by the ongoing war in Gaza. To better understand why these countries have responded as they have, it is crucial to understand the decades-long history connecting Palestine to Southeast Asia.

Countries in the region have long held deeply varied responses to the Mideast conflict, and early statements in the wake of October 7 ranged from intense criticism of Israel and approval of Hamas to outward support for Israel. As the conflict dragged on, however, more nuanced opinions have emerged within countries, especially those traditionally seen to be pro-Israel. Nevertheless, based on state-level responses, Southeast Asian countries can be categorized as follows: Supporting Palestine (Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei), Supporting Israel (the Philippines, though with civil society dissent), and Neutral (Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos). Myanmar, facing its own civil war, has had little involvement with the conflict, although Israel supplied the junta with weapons until 2022.

Though the United States is not technically an actor in the Gaza war, its deep financial and military assistance to Israel has led many countries to view the actions of Israel as intrinsically supported by the United States. Pro-Palestinian protests in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines have all been held outside their respective U.S. embassies; in many cases, pro-Palestinian politicians in the region have either criticized Western support for Israel or the United States specifically.

Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei—all majority Muslim countries—have never had diplomatic relations with Israel and have long been opposed to its mere existence. Sentiment has soured even more over the past 16 months, scuttling previously held hopes of Israeli diplomats that following the success of the Abraham Accords, Israel might normalize relations across Southeast Asia. Malaysia has been the most aggressive and vocal supporter of Palestine since October 2023. Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim called Israeli military campaigns “the height of barbarism in this world,” expressed support for Hamas, met with the late Ismail Haniyeh (chairman of the Hamas political bureau), and criticized Western and European countries for pressuring Malaysia to condemn Hamas. Malaysia has also taken measures to respond to Israel’s “cruel” assault on Gaza by barring Israeli-flagged cargo ships from docking at its ports and calling for Israel to be expelled from the United Nations, a move seconded by Indonesia. Prime Minister Anwar has been explicit in his criticisms of the U.S. role in the conflict, saying publicly in May 2024 that the United States had not done enough to address the humanitarian impacts of the war and that President Biden was denying what “the whole world can see” as genocide—the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza, the majority being women and children. Since President Trump took office, the Malaysian foreign ministry announced that it “strongly opposes” the forcible resettlement of Palestinians outside Gaza, as proposed by President Trump, calling the plan “ethnic cleansing.”

While Indonesia has had a “lower-key” approach than Malaysia to protesting the war, it has also remained a staunch supporter of the Palestinian cause. The country has a personal connection to Gaza with the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahiya, built by Indonesian NGOs and opened in 2016 by then-Indonesian vice president Jusuf Kalla. The hospital came under intense bombardment and ultimately stopped treating patients in January 2025. Before he left office on October 20, 2024, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo regularly raised the need for peace in the Levant at meetings with world leaders (he pushed President Biden to do more to stop the “atrocities” in Gaza), and Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi made Palestine the core of her global outreach. Indonesia’s new president, Prabowo Subianto, has signaled a continuation of this policy, especially in his tour through the Middle East in April—the conflict was one focus of the trip. Prabowo reiterated Indonesia’s long-standing support for Palestinian independence and criticized Western countries for “fall[ing] short in the eyes of the Global South” through their inaction on Israeli military attacks in Gaza. Prabowo has even offered to shelter Palestinians impacted by the ongoing war in Gaza and stated his willingness to continue contributing peacekeeping forces to the region, despite the injury of two Indonesian peacekeepers by Israeli tank fire.

Brunei, the smallest country in Asia, has been far less vocal in its stance on the conflict but has made statements of solidarity with Palestine.

In contrast to the Muslim majority states, most other Southeast Asian countries have attempted to remain neutral during the conflict despite domestic concerns. Singapore has been uniquely challenged by the conflict as a country that is committed to maintaining social cohesion and multiculturalism but has a significant Muslim minority that is concerned about Singapore’s deep intelligence and military ties to Israel. To preserve “peace and harmony,” the country has tried to limit public engagement with the conflict by banning the public display of emblems related to the war in Gaza, including Palestinian and Israeli flags, and denying all permits for public events related to the conflict. Some citizens have chafed at these restrictions through protests such as the unfurling of a banner labeled “End SG [Singapore]—Israel arms trade” and have organized marches that have led to arrests. Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong has admitted that the conflict in Gaza has had a much higher level of resonance than other global wars in Singapore and reiterated Singapore’s commitment toward helping the Palestinian people achieve eventual statehood.

Thailand, another Southeast Asian country with a significant Muslim minority, has also been caught in the crossroads of the conflict. More Thai citizens were murdered on October 7 than from any country other than Israel—34 were killed and 24 were taken hostage from the nearly 30,000 Thai migrant workers on Israeli plantations and orchards as of October 2023. While the Thai government has formally pledged neutrality, public opinion remains split between vocal pro-Palestine and pro-Israel factions. The other Mekong countries (Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia) have also remained neutral and largely silent on the conflict, though statements by officials—especially in Vietnam—have highlighted the need for peace given the region’s own experience of war.

The Philippines has stood out as the lone Southeast Asian country actively in support of Israel. An ally through an extension of its close relationship with the United States, the Philippines was the only Asian country to recognize the state of Israel in 1947 and was the only country not to vote in favor of an October 2023 UN resolution calling for an Israel-Hamas ceasefire. Its abstention sparked protests in Manila.

Beyond the official positions, there has been a great deal of public outcry by Southeast Asia’s citizens. Over the past year and a half, protests against the war have occurred in Jakarta and five other Indonesian cities; Kuala Lumpur; Bangkok; and across the Philippines in Manila, Marawi, Cotabato, and Taguig, where protestors clashed with police. Boycotts across Muslim-majority Southeast Asia against corporations perceived to be associated with Israel such as Starbucks and McDonald’s have closed stores, leading to major financial losses.

While broad public sentiment is hard to gauge across a diverse region, the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute’s yearly State of Southeast Asia report polls Southeast Asians in academia, the private sector, civil society, government, and regional and international organizations. The May 2024 Report made a splash in the global press when it concluded that ASEAN’s top geopolitical concern was the Israel-Hamas conflict, and the region favored alignment with China over the United States (50.5% to 49.5%) for the first time in the survey’s history. The report led many scholars, including Singaporean political analyst Chong Ja Ian, to conclude that Southeast Asian states did not prioritize China above the United States just because they are “pro-China” but reflected “anti-U.S. sentiment tied to support for Israel’s excessive actions in Gaza” and that “support for Israel means the United States is willing to veto and stall UN processes.”

The 2025 edition of the poll saw the Israel-Hamas conflict drop to fourth place among geopolitical worries for ASEAN. Nevertheless, it remained Malaysia’s and Indonesia’s top geopolitical concern; when asked “what could potentially worsen your positive impression of the United States,” a plurality of voters in Malaysia and Indonesia answered, “U.S. support for Israel in the Gaza conflict.” The most widely listed impact of the conflict among ASEAN respondents was identified as diminished trust in international law and the rules-based order. 

While the diplomatic responses from Southeast Asia have ranged from vocal opposition to Israel to careful neutrality, underlying these positions in many states is a deep-rooted historical and religious connection to the Palestinian cause. The region's Muslim-majority countries, particularly Malaysia and Indonesia, have long championed Palestinian rights, viewing the conflict through both humanitarian and religious lenses. This solidarity is not merely a product of the current crisis but is deeply ingrained in the region's political culture, shaped by past leadership, religious convictions, and the influence of Islam in state policies, making the positions of Malaysia and Indonesia from the past year and a half domestically popular. The intensity of Southeast Asia’s reaction to the Gaza conflict is best understood through the sources of this enduring support and its broader implications for international relations moving forward.

Malaysia has a long history of supporting Palestinian causes interlinked with the influence of domestic Islamic forces in its politics. In the early days of both Israel’s statehood and Malaysia’s independence from Britain, the Southeast Asian nation was courted by Israeli President David Ben-Gurion to secure recognition of the state of Israel, but he was rebuffed by Malaysia's first prime minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman. Despite Tunku’s personal openness to relations with Israel, he cited the opposition of the Islamic Party and Islamic NGOs and the fear of rejection by other Islamic countries in his decision to reject official relations. Since then, staunch opposition to Israel over support for Palestine has remained entrenched in Malaysian politics for four key reasons, according to researchers at the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia: (1) Islam as the religion of Malay people and their belief in ummah (the global community of Muslims) and brotherhood; (2) the idiosyncratic leadership of influential Malaysian leaders, such as Mahathir Mohamad and Anwar Ibrahim; (3) the ongoing human rights issues in Palestine since the Nakba (the mass displacement of Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war); and (4) the inability of major powers to resolve the conflict in Palestine. 

In Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s current government, pro-Palestinian sentiment continues based on both Anwar’s personal history with the conflict and broader domestic political support for Palestine. Anwar has long been passionate about the Palestinian cause since his days leading the Muslim Islamic Youth Movement (Abim) from 1974–1981, and was influenced by his political patron (and later rival) Mahathir Mohamad. Mahathir, who was prime minister from 1981–2003 and 2018–2020, was deeply critical of Israel to the point of outward antisemitism; he often accused Jews of controlling international media and working to destroy Muslim economies. Anwar served as Mahathir’s deputy prime minister in the United Malays National Organization (UMNO) party but was ultimately fired and jailed on alleged politically motivated accusations of sodomy; Anwar is now a member of the People’s Justice Party (PKR). While Anwar is an advocate for a more moderate version of Islam and has not been associated with the level of antisemitism that Mahathir was, he has still centered his foreign policy on supporting Palestine.

Anwar’s approach also fits within PKR’s domestic political objectives. While his parliamentary coalition has a majority, the largest party—and his greatest challenge—is the Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS), which is to the right of PKR and regularly criticizes more moderate parties for not being Islamic enough. As Islamic Studies researcher Mohd Faizal Musal writes, “champion[ing] the Palestinian cause” has become a “strategic move to silence … Islamist critics” in Malaysian politics. According to Musal, Anwar has used mass rallies, the Ministry of Education’s Palestine Solidarity Week, speeches in international forums, and the well-publicized docking ban on Israeli ships to “boost his international credibility” and ward off criticism from more conservative factions of the Malaysian government, including attacks by Mahathir.

While Indonesia has taken a softer approach than Malaysia in dealing with the conflict, both Joko Widodo and Prabowo Subianto have publicly criticized Israel to win favor with domestic populations and to elevate Indonesia’s presence on the world stage. The current approach of Indonesian leaders follows historical precedent: like Malaysia, Indonesia’s relationship with Palestine goes back to both countries’ independence. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Sheikh Muhammad Amin al-Husaini, pressured states in the Arab League to recognize the independent state of Indonesia. As a result, then-president Sukarno, who was an avid supporter of Palestine, made a statement in 1962 that has guided Indonesian foreign policy since: "As long as the freedom of Palestine has yet to be returned to the Palestinians, then it will forever be for Indonesia to stand in defiance against the occupation by Israel." Under Sukarno, Indonesian support for Palestine was framed as an anti-imperialist struggle and part of the president’s broader ideology of anti-colonialism and nonalignment. However, as dominant political ideologies shifted after the end of the Suharto dictatorship in 1998 from secular-nationalism to political Islam, Palestinian solidarity has taken on a “religious tinge.” The framing of the current chapter of the Israel-Palestine conflict through both religious and humanitarian lenses has united diverse ideological factions in Indonesia.

Former President Jokowi and his cabinet—of which current president Prabowo was minister of defense—took a tough line on Israel to “maintain his credentials as a defender of Muslim interests,” as U.S. Council on Foreign Relations' Joshua Kurlantzick wrote last year. Support for Palestine was a crucial part of the platforms advocated by each of the three presidential hopefuls in the February 2024 election; campaign rallies often functioned as pro-Palestine rallies. Prabowo heavily emphasized the Jokowi administration’s policies on Palestine; while campaigning, he pledged to build an Indonesian embassy in Palestine, arranged for military aircraft to deliver aid to Gaza, and released a military hospital ship to provide support through Egypt. However, Prabowo remained more moderate on the issue than his opponent, Anies Baswedan, who notably appeared at the massive Rally to Defend Palestine in November 2023 and was accused of overly exploiting the humanitarian crisis in Gaza as campaign fodder.

Now as president, Prabowo is largely continuing his predecessor’s Middle Eastern foreign policy with Palestine as a focus. His inaugural speech connected Indonesia’s history under Dutch colonialism to support Palestinian independence, saying “we have to defend the oppressed.” And while Prabowo is expected to have a stronger commitment to the Middle East and a tougher approach toward Israel than Jokowi, he still faces pressure from Islamist elements of Indonesia to do more. The Islamic Brotherhood Front, a rebrand of the banned hardline Islamic Defenders Front organization, and members of the Ulema Council, Indonesia’s top Islamic scholars’ body, have backed more radical proposals, such as signing up Indonesian volunteers to pick up arms and wage jihad against Israel. Hizb ut-Tahrir, an international Islamic fundamentalist organization, is reportedly exploiting the Gaza war to increase the influx of radical propaganda it publishes in Indonesia despite being banned there. The campaigning of these groups for more aggressive action on Palestine has worried some scholars, including the Head of the Terrorism Studies Program at the University of Indonesia, Muhammad Syauqillah. Speaking to Channel News Asia, Syauqillah described the 2002 Bali bombings carried out by the terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) as “an act of revenge for Israel’s action in Jenin” and highlighted how war in the Middle East has the potential to radicalize individuals in Southeast Asia. Security analysts also raised alarm over a planned attack by suspected militants affiliated with JI and another extremist group, Jamaah affiliated with JI and another extremist group, Jamaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD), which led to 59 arrests and could have been related to anger over violence in Palestine.

While other nations in the region have not had as widespread of a negative response across political factions to the war in Gaza, serious concerns with the way Israel and the United States have handled the war remain for various reasons and have reshaped traditional alliances. For example, Singapore was Israel’s strongest ally in Southeast Asia for decades given their conceptual similarities—both small countries “punching above [their] weight in a challenging neighborhood.” Yet as the war has dragged on and the death toll has grown, Singapore has become more openly critical of its partner, with Minister for Foreign Affairs Vivian Balakrishnan remarking after a ten-day trip to the Middle East that “the Israeli military response has now gone too far.”

In Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, many in government and civil society alike have elicited sympathy for the Palestinian people by comparing the war in Gaza to their recent history of war and genocide. In calling for a ceasefire, these countries routinely reference their own experiences of conflict. A number of activists and scholars have organized on the basis of shared unity with Palestine: in Cambodia, an event during the Pchum Ben holiday often used to commemorate the Khmer Rouge genocide highlighted “parallels between Cambodian and Palestinian suffering”; in Vietnam, pro-Palestinian youth organizers have underscored histories of “Western and imperialist" violence in both their country and the Levant.

As the Trump administration now faces its self-imposed task of bringing peace to the Middle East, it will also have to reckon with the way its involvement in the conflict has been received by the rest of the world, including in the geopolitically important Indo-Pacific. For several reasons, the United States can approach its key relationships in Southeast Asia with greater caution by factoring in how its Middle East policies can also impact the region.

It is worth considering the great importance of America’s relationships with the Muslim-majority nations Indonesia and Malaysia. Both are emerging economies playing critical roles in the regional and global value chains, and both sit in geographically strategic areas for global commerce and geopolitics, especially considering U.S. efforts to counter China in Southeast Asia. In particular, the U.S. relationship with Indonesia is of great economic importance, especially given Indonesia’s role as one of the largest global suppliers of nickel. The United States wants to diversify its sources of nickel—used to build electric vehicle batteries—away from China and in July approached Indonesia to join a multilateral mineral security partnership designed to accelerate the development of sustainable nickel supply chains. However, Indonesia has not yet accepted, and part of the reason could be the growing unpopularity of U.S. actions in the Middle East. Professor Dewi Fortuna Anwar, former assistant minister for foreign affairs in Indonesia, said in September 2023 that the “Israeli-Palestinian problem remains one of the stumbling blocks of warm relations between Jakarta and Washington.” While Malaysia has a smaller economy than Indonesia, it has long played an important role in America’s regional diplomacy and trade, and it will play a greater role as the chair of ASEAN this year. Moreover, Malaysia has been a key partner for initiatives to combat terrorism and religious extremism, an aspect of the relationship that may be more important than ever given the potential for radicalism stemming from the conflict in Gaza.

While U.S. support for Israel is already established and will likely not change in this administration, observers in Southeast Asia have pointed to recent U.S. policy moves as contributing to declining trust in American leadership. These include President Trump’s plans (in both spoken and AI-generated video form) to take over Gaza and clear the area of Palestinians, along with Washington’s continued vetoing of UN Security Council processes critical of Israel. From the perspective of many countries, regardless of their stance on the conflict, American actions that appear to undermine international law risk eroding the credibility it once held as a guardian of global norms, a role that is deeply important to states across Southeast Asia. Diminished confidence in the United States upholding the rule of law in hotspots, including the South China Sea, whose ownership is governed by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), and the question of Taiwan’s sovereignty will be of geopolitical consequence to the United States. Moreover, the U.S. withdrawal from international law hurts its ultimate foreign policy objective of drawing states away from China, a state that has used the conflict in Gaza as a way to announce its support for international law and the rights of Palestinians to their land. In doing so, China presents itself as a moral alternative to the United States and a more pragmatic partner to countries in Southeast Asia. 

If the United States were to establish a presence in Gaza or otherwise become more entangled in the war, even more time and resources would be diverted from Southeast Asia to the Middle East. This concerns the states across the region, especially U.S. allies fearful of potential conflict with China over the South China Sea and in the Taiwan Strait. They worry, as former Taiwanese defense minister Andrew Nien-Dzu Yang said, that “the United States won’t have a more effective and abundant capacity to deter China.”

Southeast Asian observers suggest that if Washington were able to help end the conflict without displacing the Palestinian population—whose plight commands widespread sympathy in the region—it could strengthen U.S. credibility in Southeast Asia over the long term. But many also believe that doing so would require a meaningful recalibration of U.S. policy toward Israel—something they acknowledge would be difficult to do but consider necessary for restoring trust. For President Trump to both bring an end to the conflict in the Middle East and maintain key strategic relations in Southeast Asia, a number of potential steps are recommended:

1. Southeast Asian governments and publics have repeatedly called for greater recognition of Palestinian suffering—an omission they view as evidence of Western double standards. Sufficient acknowledgment of such would show Washington’s allies in Southeast Asia that their calls for a Western response to the humanitarian crisis are not falling on deaf ears.
2. A peace plan that allows for a Palestinian state is a prerequisite not only for the cooperation of Hamas but also for the support of much of Southeast Asia. Every ASEAN member state has voiced support for a two-state solution and voted to accord Palestine with the “rights and privileges” of a state at the United Nations, a resolution later vetoed by the United States Washington’s recognition of the state of Palestine could result in diplomacy wins for the United States—when Trump in his first term offered Indonesia up to $2 billion in development assistance in exchange for Indonesia’s opening of diplomatic ties with Israel under the Abraham Accords, President Jokowi said it would accept Trump’s offer if he acknowledged a free state of Palestine in return.
3. To address potential radicalization in Muslim-majority Southeast Asia, the United States can warn that the responsibility to control terrorism lies not only with states but also with societies that protect and foster terrorist actors. To make this point, the United States can closely monitor allegations that Hamas militants received training in Malaysia. However, to address terrorism at its roots, the constant barrage of images showing the flattening of Gaza, including the destruction of mosques and important religious sites, will need to end. This means that Israel will need to return to a ceasefire deal. Furthermore, proposals by the Trump administration to relocate Palestinians to third countries, including Indonesia, have been met with alarm and warnings that such moves would inflame public opinion and damage bilateral relations.
4. Finally, one of President Trump’s greatest diplomatic skills is his ability to bring a wide variety of stakeholders to the negotiating table. This was demonstrated in the recent announcement that direct negotiations between Hamas and the United States—a tactic never tried by the Biden administration—have led to an agreement to release the last American citizen held captive in Gaza. In approaching Southeast Asia, the administration can reiterate that it will work with any country, regardless of religion or location, that seeks an end to the conflict and would support the economic re-development of Gaza, a tactic that could invite participation from Asian states.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the longest ongoing disputes in the world, and negotiating an agreement suitable to both sides is no small feat. Yet the United States needs to consider that the ramifications of how this is handled extend beyond the Gaza Strip into not just the broader Middle East but also Southeast Asia, where a quarter of the world’s Muslims live. The Trump administration urgently needs a strategy that includes addressing the worries of discontented states throughout Southeast Asia if it is to maintain a presence in a region it once considered a top priority.