Geopolitical Mirrors: What the Gaza Conflict Reveals About Asia’s Emerging Power Structures

Prof. Dr. Marco Marchetti is a seasoned academic and diplomat with 25+ years of teaching and leadership experience in international law, diplomacy, and governance. Former Deputy Ambassador for the Holy See in Africa and the Maghreb, with governance clearance and extensive involvement in political risk analysis, human rights, and multilateral relations. Currently Full Professor and Chancellor at Nusa Putra University. Expert in legal ethics, compliance, and stakeholder relations, with strong experience organizing global partnerships, managing complex budgets, and advising high-level institutions.

SPCIS: How do you assess Asia’s overall diplomatic response to the ongoing Gaza crisis?

Prof. Dr. Marco Marchetti: Asia’s diplomatic response to Gaza crisis reveals a continent in transition. Many countries welcomed the agreement reached between Hamas and Israel; however, beneath this diplomatic unity lies a complex web of divergent national interests, ideological alignments and, often, profound contradictions between rhetoric and reality.

SPCIS: What factors shape India’s position and engagement on the Gaza issue?

Prof. Dr. Marco Marchetti: India’s position on Gaza represents a great foreign policy reversal. Modi’s government has embraced Israel with unprecedented enthusiasm and, even if he justified his absence at Sharm el-Sheikh’s meeting because the presence of the Pakistani Prime Minister, he was capable to praise Trump and Netanyahu four times in that single day! It’s a fact that the leaders of Israel and India are now very close and Israel is esteemed to become in 2026 India’s main weapons suppliers, surpassing even Russia and France. An example is the recent bilateral agreement signed during his Indian visit, by Israeli Finance Minister Smotrich and his Indian counterpart Sitharaman about defence, technology and finance. While Smotrich faces international sanctions in Europe and Australia and the ICC (accordingly to the Wall Street Journal) is preparing an arrest warrants, India was rolling up a red carpet.

Under Nehru and Indira Gandhi, India wielded moral authority against colonialism and stood firmly with Palestinians at the UN, even at considerable diplomatic cost. Today, that India no longer exists. Modi’s cabinet has embraced Israel not just in buying weapons or sharing intelligence, but ideologically. Indeed, Hindu nationalist project BJP about an Indian-Hindu majority state is close to the far right vision for a “great Israel”. For many experts, the Indian leadership looks at the way Israel treats the Palestinians not as a warning but as an instruction manual. From Gaza to Kashmir, the tactics are similar: blocks, surveillance, demographic engineering, cover fire. After October 2023, in the Hindu nationalism ecosystem, like Hindutva, incidents due to anti-Muslim hatred have increased by more than 62%. Even expressing solidarity to Palestinians involves personal and political cost: Muslim students and journalists who posted pro-Palestinian online messages have been suspended, interrogated or have been victims of doxing and symbolic gestures, such as the keffiyeh or the emoticon of the Palestinian flag, have been perceived as real acts of subversion. In addition, supporting Israel has become for New Delhi an indirect way of confirming its closeness to the United States, more precisely to Donald Trump. The positioning on Gaza therefore becomes a tool to cover up commercial clashes and somehow reaffirm that, despite all the rhetoric about BRICS and Global South, India play its own, but still preferer the USA field.

SPCIS: How does China’s stance reflect its broader foreign policy in the Middle East?

Prof. Dr. Marco Marchetti: Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs, Wang Yi, declared in many occasion that the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza is a stain on the 21st century but China’s approach shows both potential and limitations. Indeed the Communist Party has an historical philo-Palestinian position and traditionally defend the establishment of an independent, fully sovereign state based on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital. Among the most recent initiatives are the 2013 “Four-point Plan for Palestine” and the “Beijing Declaration” of July 2024, reuniting 14 Palestinian groups. But in the new ceasefire agreement, China was excluded. If implemented, Trump’s framework would establish a Board of Peace with no formal Chinese role, potentially rendering Beijing’s mediation efforts irrelevant. Then, while presents itself as a champion of the Global South and anti- imperialism, China in has always avoided taking measures against Israel such as recalling its ambassador, downgrading relations, imposing sanctions, or suspending agreements. Actually it’s the opposite: today China is the second trading partner of Israel, with crucial agreements in the technological field. At the end Middle East, for China, is not a priority and Beijing probably rejoices to see how US is spending resources and time in manging their role and strategy.

SPCIS: In your view, what drives Indonesia’s strong humanitarian and political response to Gaza?

Prof. Dr. Marco Marchetti: As the most populated Muslim country, Indonesia positions itself as Palestine’s moral champion: Jakarta doesn’t have diplomatic relationship with Israel and recently made relevant demonstrative actions, like a huge deployment of humanitarian aid to Gaza and the visa denial to Israeli gymnasts for the 2025 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships.

However, if the diplomatic ties are cut, economic exchange works very well: during the Gaza war the export from Indonesia to Israel increased by 27% in 2024 and +19% in 2025%, while the import from Israel to Indonesia increased by +297% in the only 2024! More damaging to Indonesia’s moral credibility is that among the imported goods, the main voice is surveillance technology. An investigation by Amnesty International, Haaretz, and Tempo found that at least four Israeli-linked firms have been selling invasive spyware and cyber surveillance technology to Indonesia. What kind of moral superiority you can claim while you are buying the very same weapons Israel is testing on Palestinians?

Indonesia’s cold calculations reflects also the Jakarta’s ambition to accede the OECD: in fact, the OECD Secretary-General M. Cormann confirmed that Indonesia must establish diplomatic relations with all OECD member countries before admission.

Nevertheless, President Prabowo contribution to the summit of peace in Egypt, confirming Jakarta’s commitment to a constructive process. The Indonesian Minister of Foreign Affairs has defined the agreement as a significant step towards a permanent end to violence and, as the President already stated many times, Indonesia is ready to send peacekeeping troops to Gaza and to participate to the reconstruction. However, Trump’s plan creates for Indonesia, both opportunities and dilemmas. While it provides potential pathways toward the OECD membership Indonesia craves, it also makes it harder to maintain the fiction of unwavering support for Palestine while pursuing normalized relations with Israel, especially in consideration that the plan never support a two State solution.

SPCIS: Do you see any areas where Asian countries could cooperate to promote peace and stability in the region?

Prof. Dr. Marco Marchetti: The Gaza crisis has fundamentally exposed the contradictions at the heart of Asia’s emergence as a global power centre and that “Asian multilateralism” is still largely

performative.

Despite divergent national positions and underlying hypocrisies, several frameworks for Asian cooperation on Gaza are emerging like CEAPAD (Conference on Cooperation among East Asian Countries for Palestinian Development). Initiated by Japan in 2013, and been in 2025 at its fourth meeting, provides a platform for (East) Asian countries to support Palestinian state-building. The CEAPAD pragmatic approach states that, in order to implement a two State solution, Palestine has to became “real” State, with democratic, economic and administrative independent structures. This practical approach allows countries with different political positions to collaborate and coordinate humanitarian action.

The Gaza crisis has ultimately revealed that Asia’s rise doesn’t necessarily herald a more just or principled world order: as the traditional Western-dominated order faces challenges, Asia’s diverse responses to Gaza suggest that the future international system might be characterized not by competing ideological blocs but by fluid coalitions. Traditional hypocrisies of the western liberalism will be joined by new forms of duplicity, and the rhetoric of South-South solidarity is now replaced by more sophisticated realpolitik.