By destroying facilities of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in occupied East Jerusalem, Israel has done more than demolish buildings. It has shattered, yet again, the illusion that the two-state solution remains viable—and exposed the moral bankruptcy of an international order that continues to pretend otherwise. For Indonesia, a country long committed to Palestinian self-determination and international law, this moment should be a reckoning.

On January 20, Israeli forces, led by the extremist national security figure Itamar Ben-Gvir, destroyed UNRWA facilities in East Jerusalem. This was not a battlefield accident. It was a deliberate political act: an open assault on the United Nations, on humanitarian law, and on the very idea that Palestinians are entitled to protection, dignity, or a future. Indonesia’s Foreign Ministry was right to condemn it in the strongest terms, calling it a “serious violation” of UN immunities and a breach of Israel’s obligations under international law.

But condemnation is no longer enough.

UNRWA is not a peripheral institution. It is the backbone of Palestinian survival, providing education, health care, food aid, and basic services to millions of refugees. To attack UNRWA is to attack civilians directly—to target children in classrooms, patients in clinics, families dependent on food aid. When Israel cuts electricity and water to UNRWA facilities, bans its operations, and then physically destroys its infrastructure, it is not pursuing security. It is executing collective punishment.

This assault comes despite the International Court of Justice’s legal opinion of October 22, 2025, which reaffirmed Israel’s obligation to support the presence and work of the United Nations in the occupied Palestinian territories, including UNRWA. Israel’s response has been defiance—brazen, calculated, and contemptuous. As UN Secretary General António Guterres stated, these actions are “unacceptable” and incompatible with international law. UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini was even clearer: this is “open and deliberate defiance” of the law.

Defiance is the point.

For decades, the two-state solution has been sold as the only realistic path to peace. Indonesia, like much of the Global South, has supported it in good faith, believing that international law, diplomacy, and UN institutions could restrain power and deliver justice. But what does a two-state solution mean when one side systematically destroys the institutions meant to sustain the other? What state can exist when its schools are bombed, its aid agencies criminalized, and its people starved?

Israel’s actions against UNRWA are not isolated. They are part of a broader pattern that includes the siege and devastation of Gaza, mass displacement, famine conditions, and the normalization of civilian death on an industrial scale. When an occupying power targets humanitarian lifelines while continuing large-scale military operations against a trapped population, the word “war” becomes insufficient. This is destruction with intent. This is a genocidal war.

The claim is uncomfortable—but the facts demand it. Genocide is not only about mass graves; it is about policies that make life impossible for a people. Starvation, denial of medical care, destruction of education, and systematic displacement are all instruments of annihilation. Gaza’s ongoing hunger crisis, combined with the dismantling of UNRWA across Palestinian territories, shows a coordinated effort to erase Palestinian existence, not merely defeat an armed group.

Indonesia understands this instinctively. Born from anti-colonial struggle, Indonesia’s foreign policy has long rejected occupation and apartheid. Yet continuing to frame Palestine through the lens of a two-state solution risks clinging to a fantasy that serves the occupier more than the occupied. Israel’s actions make clear that it has no intention of allowing a sovereign, viable Palestinian state—now or ever.

The destruction of UNRWA in East Jerusalem is therefore a message: international law will be ignored, the United Nations will be humiliated, and Palestinians will be collectively punished, regardless of global opinion. If that is the reality, then Indonesia—and the world—must move beyond empty rituals of concern.

What is needed is moral clarity and political courage: accountability for crimes, meaningful sanctions, and a rethinking of “peace processes” that function as cover for permanent domination. Supporting Palestinian rights today means confronting the failure of the two-state framework and acknowledging that justice—not diplomatic nostalgia—is the prerequisite for peace.

UNRWA’s rubble is not just debris. It is the wreckage of a lie the world has told itself for too long.

---