CEAPAD and Japan's Cautious Approach to Palestine

The Diplomat

9 hours ago

There is a growing push by G-7 member states to frame Palestinian recognition as diplomatic censure of Israel's conduct in Gaza. France has pledged unconditional recognition; the United Kingdom has announced plans to recognize Palestine at the United Nations General Assembly absent 'substantive steps' toward a ceasefire; and Canada has joined the chorus, conditional on Palestinian Authority reforms. Rather than aligning with this momentum, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Hayashi Yoshimasa reiterated Tokyo's commitment to 'supporting progress for peace,' including 'the appropriate timing and methods' for advancing that goal.
This careful positioning echoes earlier remarks by Japanese Foreign Minister Iwaya Takeshi, who reaffirmed Japan's longstanding support for a two-state solution and spotlighted Japan's flagship mechanism to channel aid and foster peace: the Conference on Cooperation among East Asian Countries for Palestinian Development (CEAPAD). Technocratic and apolitical by design, CEAPAD encapsulates Japan's longstanding approach to the Israel-Palestine issue – cautious, development-oriented, and rooted in quiet multilateralism.
This preference has shaped Japan's engagement since it became one of the most steadfast bilateral supporters of Palestinian development among G-7 nations, as reflected in its extensive aid portfolio – over $2.6 billion disbursed to date, including $230 million since October 2023 alone. In March 2025, Japan, for the first time, received wounded Palestinians for medical treatment.
Tokyo's approach, though consistent, now stands in sharper relief as global diplomacy recalibrates in response to the Gaza War's devastation.
CEAPAD was launched in 2013, during a window of relative diplomatic opportunity shaped by the Arab Spring's aftermath and the Obama administration's cautious optimism.
More than a decade later, the conflict-averse logic underpinning CEAPAD remains unchanged. Its fourth meeting (CEAPAD IV) was held in Kuala Lumpur in July 2025 – nearly two years after an attack on Israelis by Hamas triggered a massive Israeli invasion that has killed over 63,000 people. Yet despite the ongoing conflict, the forum – attended by Japan, ASEAN states, South Korea, Palestine, and the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) – offered little beyond routine calls for humanitarian access, reconstruction, and a reaffirmation of the two-state solution.
Its 2025 action plan emphasized capacity-building and development support, once again highlighting the Jericho Agro-Industrial Park (JAIP) – a 'first-of-its-kind' initiative conceived nearly two decades ago. Yet, JAIP now reads less as a forward-looking strategy and more as a legacy project, emblematic of CEAPAD's continuity at the expense of relevance amid radically altered realities on the ground.
This cautious logic extended to Japan's most recent tenure on the United Nations Security Council (2023–2024), where it adhered to familiar lines: condemning Hamas, affirming Israel's right to self-defense within international law, and supporting humanitarian aid to Gaza. But this formulaic posture quickly buckled under pressure. Japan's initial reluctance to label the October 7 attacks as 'terrorism' drew accusations of hedging, even as officials framed it as 'flexibility.' Japan's subsequent support for humanitarian resolutions – occasionally diverging from U.S. positions – was meant to convey neutrality but failed to persuade. Its rejection of a Russian-sponsored resolution, citing the absence of Hamas condemnation, was widely read in Arab capitals as tacit approval of Israel's campaign, revealing the limits of Tokyo's risk-averse, rules-based diplomacy at a time when moral clarity was increasingly expected.
Such diplomatic hedging reflects deeper constraints that have long shaped Japan's role in the Middle East. More than 90 percent of its oil imports come from the region, reinforcing the imperative to maintain stable ties with Gulf producers. Constitutional pacifism limits Tokyo to humanitarian and development roles, while the strength of the Japan-U.S. alliance – underpinned by Washington's staunch support for Israel – discourages political positioning that might jeopardize this strategic cornerstone. CEAPAD, in this light, is not an outlier but a microcosm of the dilemmas that have long defined Japan's regional engagement.
Designed to avoid overt political confrontation, CEAPAD now struggles to respond meaningfully to the very crisis it was meant to address. Japan's tendency to follow rather than shape diplomatic responses has cast it less as a principled actor than a hand-wringing one.
The dissonance is particularly stark at home. While public dissent in Japan historically remains subdued, the Gaza War has elicited sustained mobilization – rallies in Shibuya, persistent campus encampments, lone protesters holding banners for months. Even municipal actors have broken with precedent: Nagasaki's city council passed a rare resolution urging diplomatic pressure in support of Gaza, and the city's mayor declined to invite the Israeli ambassador to its annual Peace Memorial Ceremony. In the corporate sphere, Itochu Corporation withdrew from defense partnerships with Israel's Elbit Systems in early 2024, with Nippon Express soon following. These signals of domestic unease have not shifted official policy, but they expose a widening gap between Japan's bureaucratic steadiness and the moral urgency resonating across parts of its public and corporate sectors.
CEAPAD's internal divisions mirror the broader diplomatic gridlock. While launched by Japan, the forum includes ASEAN members with sharply divergent positions on the conflict. Malaysia has adopted a starkly pro-Hamas stance, refusing Israeli ship entries and accusing Israel of genocide. Indonesia has endorsed South Africa's genocide case and called for Israel's suspension from the United Nations. Brunei supports full U.N. membership for Palestine. At the other end, Singapore and the Philippines reflect a more cautious line, endorsing the two-state solution but resisting punitive measures.
Crucially, the Palestinian delegation at CEAPAD IV was led by a West Bank-based minister with no authority in Gaza. Since Hamas seized control of the enclave in 2007, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has played no role in its day-to-day governance of Gaza. Long before the current war, Hamas oversaw civil administration, managed aid, and employed tens of thousands of civil servants – including teachers, police, and bureaucrats – forming the core of Gaza's public sector. Despite the war's devastation, fragments of this apparatus remain intact. CEAPAD, in effect, channels development support through a leadership that has been structurally excluded from half the territory it claims to represent.
The PA's legitimacy crisis compounds the problem. A poll by the Arab World for Research and Development (AWRAD) found that only 31 percent of Gazans support a PA-led government, while 47 percent prefer a national unity arrangement. In the West Bank, just 10 percent back the PA, with 25 percent favoring Hamas. Across both territories, over 60 percent of respondents describe the PA as a burden. CEAPAD's continued focus on West Bank institutions and PA-centric frameworks only deepens its disconnect from Palestinian political realities.
UNRWA's mounting controversies have further exposed CEAPAD's institutional fragility. It is now entangled in mounting legal and political controversies. A new U.S. lawsuit filed in August 2025 accuses the agency of aiding Hamas and Hezbollah, following the Trump administration's rollback of immunity protections. This follows earlier suits filed by victims of the October 7 attack. At CEAPAD IV, Iwaya reiterated Japan's intent to 'consider necessary assistance' to UNRWA, while encouraging 'enhancement of its governance.' Yet that message sits uneasily with the agency's deteriorating operational environment. Recent Israeli legislation has banned UNRWA operations in parts of East Jerusalem and sharply curtailed its access to Gaza. Japan's temporary funding suspension – later reversed – was emblematic of the reputational fallout that now shadows CEAPAD's legitimacy.
This ideological dissonance hampers CEAPAD's ability to function as a strategic forum. The forum's lowest-common-denominator messaging—'two-state solution,' 'capacity-building,' 'aid delivery'—feels increasingly unmoored from the cacophony on the ground. What once passed for pragmatic ambiguity now risks irrelevance.
The Middle East that CEAPAD was built to serve has been remapped. The Gaza War has torn open a Pandora's box of intractable grievances, exposing the fragility of long-favored diplomatic approaches to the Palestinian question. Whether Japan is prepared to recalibrate remains to be seen. In this altered landscape, CEAPAD – once a distinctive East Asian contribution to Palestinian state-building and a clever workaround for regional sensitivities – now feels adrift. CEAPAD, and Japan's approach to Palestine more broadly, increasingly resembles old wine in an old bottle: its framework frozen in a bygone era, ill-suited to the urgency and complexity of the present.