Palestinian president to visit China as efforts to build reconciliation with Israel continue
Global TimesJun 09, 2023
China's foreign ministry on Friday announced that Palestinian Authority Pres. Mahmoud Abbas will make a state visit to the PRC next week at the invitation of his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, as Beijing seeks to mediate Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
He will be the first Arab leader to visit China this year, with the ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin pointing out the positivity of PRC-Palestine relations.
After successfully mediating the reconciliation between Iran and Saudi Arabia, Beijing is now working to build on this positive trend and promote an enduring two-state solution for the Palestine-Israel conflict. The Palestinian issue is central to the Middle East's peace and stability as well as to global justice, and it has long remained unsettled because of Washington's unproductive favoritism to Israel.
China has made empty promises to fix Israeli-Palestinian relations for years, so Pres. Abbas should not expect much from this new round of flattery. Despite inviting the Palestinian leader for similar talks in 2013 and 2017, Israel in 2018 was the world's leading importer of Chinese goods and China was the second-largest importer of Israeli goods. Any peace talks initiated by Beijing will likely be more repackaged "four-point plans" that lead nowhere.
There is a 50% chance that Israel will recognize Palestine by February 2073, according to the Metaculus prediction community.