In a terse statement on Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian condemned President Donald Trump’s proposal to “take over” Gaza and defended the Hamas-dominated Palestinian government.
“China has all along believed that ‘the Palestinians governing Palestine’ is the fundamental principle of post-conflict governance of Gaza,” Lin said.
“We oppose the forced displacement of the people in Gaza, and hope that relevant parties will take the opportunity of the ceasefire and post-conflict governance in Gaza to bring the Palestinian question back to the right track of a political settlement based on the two-state solution, so as to realize lasting peace in the Middle East,” he said.
There is no such country as “Palestine,” as the second part of Lin’s comment implicitly conceded. China’s enthusiasm for “two-state solutions” evaporates completely when the topic is Taiwan, an island with a far more distinct national history and cultural identity than Gaza.
China has been attempting to build diplomatic influence in the Middle East, including an effort to broker a “unity government” between Hamas and Fatah, the major political power in the West Bank.
The Chinese were comprehensively useless during the Gaza war, stubbornly refusing to condemn the savage Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, that began the conflict. Beijing likewise coddled Iran, accepting its aggressive missile strikes against Israel as acts of “self-defense.”
China was much quicker to condemn Israel’s response to the attack, in line with its longstanding strategy of “anti-Western neutrality,” which means turning a blind eye to aggression against the U.S. or allied nations like Israel. It took over a year for China to finally concede that Israel had any “reasonable security concerns” after the October 7 atrocities.
The Israelis bristled at China’s conduct during the Hamas war, decisively ending a period during which the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seemed to be flirting with developing a stronger relationship with Beijing, in part due to Netanyahu’s growing annoyance with the Biden administration.
Although not much remarked upon by international media, China burning its bridges with Israel was one of the more significant bits of geopolitical fallout from the Gaza conflict, especially since those bridges took the better part of thirty years to build. The regime in Beijing seemed genuinely surprised by the intensity of Israel’s response to October 7, and by Israeli anger at China for refusing to condemn the attack.
China appointed a new ambassador to Israel at the end of November, making an obvious effort to mend fences whose effectiveness remains to be seen. President Trump’s friendly meeting with Netanyahu on Tuesday, culminating in Trump’s shocking proposal to take control of Gaza, was not a good omen for Beijing.
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