ASEAN’s statement on the Middle East is complicity in disguise

By issuing a cautious, measured statement on the recent Israel–Iran war, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has once again chosen rhetorical neutrality over moral clarity. On 26 June, its foreign ministers expressed vague “concern,” called for de-escalation, and offered generic support for the United Nations. But nowhere in the four-paragraph document does the statement acknowledge the core reality behind the crisis: Israel’s systemic aggression, sustained by unwavering Western support.

The omission is glaring—and deliberate.

ASEAN’s silence on Israel’s role in the decades-long violence against Palestinians is not a diplomatic oversight. It is a choice. The choice to prioritize relationships—economic, military, and political—over principle. The choice to avoid antagonising Western patrons. The choice to issue a “statement” rather than take a position.

In its carefully worded lines, ASEAN avoids naming any actor, as if all parties bear equal responsibility. But the violence of June 2025 did not begin in a vacuum. It followed nine months of relentless bombardment and siege in Gaza, with tens of thousands of Palestinians killed, displaced, or disappeared. It followed years of occupation, land confiscation, and legal apartheid. It followed a century of Zionist settler colonialism, legitimised by Western powers and defended through diplomatic immunity.

To equate Israel—a nuclear-armed state that routinely violates international law—with its regional opponents is to obscure the nature of the conflict entirely.

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Perhaps more frustrating is ASEAN’s reflexive appeal to the United Nations as a vehicle for resolution. This institutional gesture, while sounding principled, ignores the practical futility of a body paralysed by the United States’ veto power. The Security Council, which supposedly upholds international peace and security, has repeatedly failed to demand a permanent ceasefire in Gaza—because the US, Israel’s unyielding ally, will not allow it.

To cite the UN without criticising the veto system, or the West’s consistent use of it to shield Israel from accountability, is to endorse the illusion of international consensus while refusing to challenge its dysfunction.

Even the language ASEAN employs—“territorial integrity,” “international law,” “civilian protection”—has become hollow. These phrases lose meaning when they are not applied to the Palestinians, who have lived without sovereignty, safety, or legal protection for generations. The very international law ASEAN invokes has already found Israel in violation countless times—rulings which remain unheeded and unenforced.

At its heart, ASEAN’s statement reflects a deeper unwillingness to address the real question: What would it take to end this conflict?

The answer is not another temporary ceasefire. It is not a return to U.S.-brokered negotiations, or to the discredited framework of the two-state solution. That model is dead—rendered unworkable by Israel’s de facto annexation of Palestinian land and the geographical fragmentation of any future Palestinian state.

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A durable, just peace requires structural transformation. The only remaining path is a single state in all of historic Palestine, where Palestinians and Jews live with equal rights—not separation, supremacy, or siege. A one-state solution dismantles the ethno-nationalist foundation of the Israeli state and replaces it with equal citizenship and justice for all inhabitants, from the river to the sea.

That vision is not politically convenient, but it is morally clear.

ASEAN’s failure to even gesture in that direction reveals where it stands: on the side of caution, respectability, and disengagement. Some member states may wish to preserve quiet diplomatic or trade ties with Israel. Others may fear Western retaliation. Whatever the reason, the result is the same: an official statement that avoids truth, evades accountability, and offers Palestinians nothing.

The choice facing ASEAN is no longer about diplomacy. It is about legitimacy. A bloc that claims to uphold sovereignty, peace, and the rule of law cannot remain neutral while apartheid persists. It cannot celebrate “de-escalation” while a population remains under siege. It cannot invoke the UN while ignoring the structural biases that make that body incapable of defending Palestinian rights.

There is no safety in silence anymore. Either ASEAN begins to speak with clarity and conviction—or it forfeits its credibility on the world stage. Ceasefires without justice will not stop the next war. Only an end to Israel’s impunity—and the dismantling of the system that sustains it—will.

Until then, every ASEAN statement that fails to name the root cause of the crisis is not just meaningless. It is part of the problem.

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The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.