Chinese President Xi Jingping has announced the signing of a strategic partnership with his Palestinian Authority counterpart, Mahmoud Abbas, signaling Beijing’s intention to help mediate a solution to the “Palestinian question”. This week's developments have sparked discussions on whether China is looking to take over as the intermediary between Palestinians and the Zionist entity.

Last year China signaled its support for the “just cause” of Palestine on an official level, months ago raising its intention to mediate dialogue between the Zionist regime and the Palestinian Authority (PA). This week, China’s head of State, Xi Jinping, took the issue further, inviting PA President Mahmoud Abbas to Beijing as the first Arab leader to visit in such a capacity so far this year. Concerns have arisen over what China’s intentions are, with some corporate media in the West speculating that the recent visit is nothing more than a show that is designed to embarrass the United States government.

With China’s recent rise to prominence in the Middle East, punctuated by its historic mediation of Saudi-Iran rapprochement, the role of the US regime appears to be diminishing. Indeed the United States government is now in a much weaker position regionally, in an area of the world that was until recently viewed as part of its own backyard. However, Beijing’s push towards taking hold of the Palestine-Zionist conflict is clearly a huge slap in the face, one that has much deeper potential implications than just a symbolic insult.

The Zionist entity and the United States government have been attached at the hip since the June 1967 war; it was then that the Israelis proved their usefulness to Washington and embarked on a journey that would land them their position as a Western outpost, under US supervision. Although the Zionist entity was clearly utilized by the British and French as far back as the 1950s, culminating in the 1956 invasion of Egypt, there were still tensions with the newly formed occupying regime and its Western backers from afar. A good indication of this was the plans of the British to mount an airstrike campaign against Zionist airfields in the early 1950s, in addition to the US having threatened to punish the Israelis for their failure to implement UN resolution 194, which is what “Israel’s” international legitimacy was predicated on.

Since the June 1967 war of aggression against Egypt, Jordan, Syria and the Palestinian people, the relations between the Zionist entity and the United States developed into a love affair. The unbreakable bond has resulted in a situation whereby the current President of the US calls himself an adherent to the ideology of Zionism, and successive American administrations have taken the position of unconditionally supporting “Israel”. Without going into further details, the US and Israel are joint at the hip, with “Tel Aviv” meaning more to Washington than the lives of its own citizens. In the case of the assassination of US citizen and veteran al-Jazeera journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, last year, the US state department actively worked to cover up the blatant and provable Israeli war crime, as to not dare lead to a situation where their Israeli ally would have to punish one of its occupying soldiers. 

The other major problem, beyond the US viewing “Israel” as its base in the Middle East and working in tandem with it to perpetuate a system of Apartheid in the Holy Land and destroy all potential threats regionally, is that the Americans won’t even talk to the majority of Palestinian political representatives. The US, like the Zionist entity, views every single Palestinian political party, movement and/or resistance group, as a terrorist organization, other than the mainstream branch of the Fatah Party which runs the Palestinian Authority (PA).

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If China was to step up its role in mediating between Palestinians and the Zionist regime, it would at least be capable of actually speaking to a representative pool of Palestinian leaders. Beijing stresses that it supports the so-called “Two-State solution”, which is based on 1967 lines, and seeks to create a Palestinian State inside the enclaves of Gaza, the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem. This is the unanimously agreed upon international consensus on what the resolution to the conflict should look like, according to the majority of UN member states, so it doesn’t exactly say much at this time.

Some may criticize the Chinese position for not going far enough, knowing that the so-called “Two-State solution” is in fact dead and not what the majority of Palestinians envision for their future. However, it must be said that China would then be taking a more radical position than the PA itself, along with abandoning the international consensus, if they were to start talking about a One-State solution. Without a unified Palestinian leadership presenting its demands, one cannot expect a foreign power to come in and oppose the PA’s own position.

Realistically, regardless of whether China’s intentions are to actually support the Palestinian cause or not, before there is any political solution at all, there must first be a unified Palestinian representative organization or platform. The current predicament, in which the Hamas government in Gaza is at odds with the PA that operates with limited powers under Israeli rule in the West Bank, makes it impossible for any solution to be implemented. 

While the US government views Hamas as a terrorist group and the Fatah-run PA as a potential tool to destroy Palestinian resistance, the Chinese government currently operates on a fairly even playing field. Beijing has invested tens of billions of dollars in Israeli infrastructure, tech startups and weapons, holding leverage over “Tel Aviv” with its involvement in the Israeli economy. On the other hand, Beijing also has open channels for dialogue with Hamas, the Fatah-run PA and all the other Palestinian groups, meaning that it possesses true potential to serve as a middle-man, unlike the US which only looks out for Israeli interests.

At this current time, the Israeli side would never entertain any solution whereby territory is handed over to the Palestinian people. Its fascist right-wing coalition seeks annexation, changing the status quo at Al-Aqsa mosque and further ethnic cleansing campaigns against the Palestinian people. The only way that the Zionist entity will make any concession to the Palestinians is if it is forced to do so, with concessions over territory only coming through the force of arms or threat of economic consequences. 

This being said, if China wants to help make a solution closer to being realized, a tangible step that they could take is to help in unifying the Palestinian factions, ideally through achieving a new round of legislative and presidential elections. Although this is a tough task for the time being.

Overall, the Chinese initiative is a positive step. No solution will be reached with the US as its intermediary, especially as the American government has shown itself as weak when its own red-lines are frequently violated by the Israelis. Even when the US suffers as the result of Israeli violations of its red lines on issues like settlement expansion, Washington goes into overdrive to cover up the violations committed by the Apartheid regime. In the case of Xi Jingping’s China, they have the ability to come in with a balanced platform and potentially make breakthrough achievements, at least in the Palestinian political scene.

This period of time is a transitional stage for the Palestinian national liberation movement, with the future of the West Bank’s rising resistance groups representing the most important path towards a strong future for the movement. There must be a reshuffling, a single representative voice for the Palestinian people and one that they will trust in; this needs to be in the form of a unified leadership eventually and will inevitably encompass the younger generations of Palestinians also.