{"id":270476,"date":"2024-07-29T12:01:48","date_gmt":"2024-07-29T11:01:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=270476"},"modified":"2024-11-26T21:25:21","modified_gmt":"2024-11-26T21:25:21","slug":"china-throws-clout-behind-palestine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2024\/07\/china-throws-clout-behind-palestine\/","title":{"rendered":"China Throws Clout behind Palestine"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

(Photo Credit: The Cradle)<\/p><\/div>\n

The Beijing Declaration cements the idea that global conflict resolution is now Made in China. But it also throws a wrench in US\u2013Israeli efforts to manufacture a collaborator Palestinian government after the war in Gaza.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

26 Jul 2024 <\/em>– The\u00a0Beijing Declaration<\/a>, signed earlier this week, constitutes yet another stunning Chinese diplomatic coup, but the document goes far beyond affirming China\u2019s pull.<\/p>\n

The gathering<\/a> of representatives of 14 Palestinian factions to commit to full reconciliation showed the entire world that the road to solving intractable geopolitical problems is no longer unilateral: it is multipolar,\u00a0multi-nodal<\/i>,\u00a0and features BRICS\/Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) member China as an inescapable leader.<\/p>\n

The concept of China as a peacemaking superpower is now so established that after the Iran\u2013Saudi Arabia rapprochement and the signing of the Beijing Declaration, Ukrainian Foreign Minister\u00a0Dmytro Kuleba chose to tell his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi in Beijing that Kiev is now finally ready to negotiate the end of the NATO\u2013Russia proxy war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Palestinians who came to Beijing were beaming. For Fatah Vice Chairman Mahmoud al-Aloul, \u201cChina is a light. China\u2019s efforts are rare on the international stage.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hamas spokesman Hussam Badran said the Palestinian resistance movement accepted the Chinese invitation \u201cwith a positive spirit and patriotic responsibility.\u201d All Palestinian factions have reached a consensus on \u201cPalestinian demands to end the war,\u201d adding that the \u201cmost important\u201d part of the declaration is to form a government that builds Palestinian national consensus to \u201cmanage the affairs of the people of Gaza and the West Bank, oversee reconstruction, and create conditions for elections.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u201cthree-step\u201d Chinese proposal\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Wang Yi cut to the chase: the Palestinian issue, says the Chinese foreign minister, is at the core of everything in West Asia. He emphasized that Beijing<\/p>\n

\u2026 has never had any selfish interests in the Palestinian issue. China is one of the first countries to recognize the PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization] and the State of Palestine and has always firmly supported the Palestinian people in restoring their legitimate national rights. What we value is morality and what we advocate is justice.<\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What Wang did not say \u2013 and didn\u2019t need to \u2013 is that this position is the overwhelming BRICS+ position, shared by the Global Majority, including, crucially, all Muslim countries.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all in a name \u2013 everyone in the foreseeable future will note this is the \u201cBeijing\u201d declaration unequivocally supporting One Palestine.<\/p>\n

No wonder all political factions had to rise to the occasion, committing to support an independent Palestinian government with executive powers over Gaza and the occupied West Bank. But there\u2019s a catch: this will take place immediately after the war, which the regime in Tel Aviv wants to prolong indefinitely.<\/p>\n

What Wang Yi left somewhat implicit is that China\u2019s consistent historical position supporting Palestine may be a decisive factor in helping future Palestinian governance institutions.\u00a0Beijing is proposing three steps to get there:<\/p>\n

First, a \u201ccomprehensive, lasting and sustainable\u201d ceasefire in Gaza as soon as possible, and \u201caccess to humanitarian aid and rescue on the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n

Second, \u201cjoint efforts\u201d \u2013 assuming western involvement \u2013 toward \u201cpost-conflict governance of Gaza under the principle of \u2018Palestinians governing Palestine.\u2019\u201d An urgent priority is restarting reconstruction \u201cas soon as possible.\u201d Beijing stresses that \u201cthe international community needs to support Palestinian factions in establishing an interim national consensus government and realize effective management of Gaza and the West Bank.\u201d<\/p>\n

Third, help Palestine \u201cto become a full member state of the UN\u201d and implement the two-state solution. Beijing maintains that \u201cit is important to support the convening of a broad-based, more authoritative, and more effective international peace conference to work out a timetable and road map for the two-state solution.\u201d<\/p>\n

For all the lofty aims, especially when it is patently clear that Israel has de facto buried the two-state solution \u2013 as witnessed in the\u00a0Knesset\u2019s recent vote<\/a>\u00a0to reject any Palestinian state \u2013\u00a0at least China is directly proposing what the Global Majority unanimously considers as a fair outcome.<\/p>\n

Also important to note is the presence of diplomats from China\u2019s fellow BRICS members Russia, South Africa, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, alongside diplomats from Algeria, Qatar, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Turkiye at the signing of the declaration.<\/p>\n

Genocide as a wellness treatment<\/strong><\/p>\n

Now compare China\u2019s diplomatic coup with the US Congress giving 58 standing ovations to Israel\u2019s psychopath-in-chief peddling the notion of genocide as a wellness treatment.<\/p>\n

Bibi Netanyahu\u2019s hero\u2019s welcome in Washington takes the notion of collective psychopathology to new heights. And yet complicity in the Gaza genocide is not exactly an exception to the rule when it comes to American political leadership.<\/p>\n

The Hegemon\u2019s political \u201celites\u201d \u2013 with Franco-British help \u2013 have also been active collaborators and weaponizers of the oppressive Saudi and Emirati bombing and blockade of Yemen, which, over nine years, collectively caused even more civilian deaths than in Gaza. Famine in Yemen is far from over, yet this has been a completely invisible war to the collective west.<\/p>\n

At least karma ended up intervening. China promoted the rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and Riyadh has become a BRICS+ member and deeply engaged in the de-dollarization drive, in which the petroyuan is emerging.<\/p>\n

Moreover, the Yemeni resistance movement Ansarallah managed to single-handedly humiliate the US Navy. The US\u2013UK \u201crevenge\u201d was to open another war front, bombing Yemeni installations to protect Israeli shipping in the Red Sea and waterways beyond.<\/p>\n

As much as Yemen remains at war on two fronts \u2013 against the Hegemon and Israel while keeping an eye on potential Saudi shenanigans \u2013 Palestine continues to be decimated by a fully US-backed Israel. The Beijing Declaration will not mean anything if not implemented. But how?<\/p>\n

Assuming a partial success, the declaration may be able to put a spanner in the works of the absolute impunity of the Tel Aviv\u2013Washington agenda because after the Beijing deal, finding a collaborator Palestine government to perpetuate the occupation could be much more difficult.<\/p>\n

All Palestinian factions now owe China a serious debt; internal squabbling will have to cease. Otherwise, it would amount to a serious loss of face for Beijing.<\/p>\n

At the same time, the Chinese leadership seems very much aware that this bet is a Global South bet \u2013 laying bare the Hegemon\u2019s hypocrisy for the whole world to see. Much like the Saudi\u2013Iran deal clinched in Beijing, the optics could not be more auspicious, especially when compared to the Israeli\u2013American refusal of a meaningful ceasefire.<\/p>\n

Real Palestine unity will also give extra bite to each and every global initiative at the UN, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), and other global forums.<\/p>\n

All of the above, though, pales in comparison to the dire facts on the ground. The ideologically genocidal Israelis \u2013 fully supported by US political \u201cleadership\u201d \u2013 continue to get away with what they really want: the outright mass murder-cum-ethnic cleansing\u00a0of\u00a0millions of Palestinians, something that, in theory, should lead to an absolute\u00a0demographic majority\u00a0for Israel\u2019s expansion into all Palestinian lands.<\/p>\n

This tragedy will not stop anytime soon. The Beijing Declaration won\u2019t make it stop. Only the Hegemon severing its weapons funnel to Tel Aviv can force it to stop. Yet today, what we\u2019re instead seeing from Washington is 58 standing ovations for genocide.<\/p>\n

_______________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Pepe Escobar, born in Brazil, is a correspondent and editor-at-large at <\/em>Asia Times and<\/em> columnist for<\/em> Consortium News and<\/em> Strategic Culture in Moscow. Since the mid-1980s he\u2019s lived and worked as a foreign correspondent in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Singapore, and Bangkok. He has extensively covered Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia to China, Iran, Iraq and the wider Middle East. He is the author of <\/em>Globalistan<\/a> (2007),<\/em> Red Zone Blues<\/a> (2007), <\/em>Obama Does Globalistan<\/a> (2009), <\/em>Empire of Chaos<\/a> (2014) and <\/em>2030<\/a> (2015), all by Nimble Books. Pepe was contributing editor to <\/em>The Empire and The Crescent and<\/em> Tutto in Vendita in Italy and is also associated with the Paris-based European Academy of Geopolitics. When not on the road he lives between Paris and Bangkok. <\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 thecradle.co<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

26 Jul 2024 – The Beijing Declaration cements the idea that global conflict resolution is now Made in China. But it also throws a wrench in US\u2013Israeli efforts to manufacture a collaborator Palestinian government after the war in Gaza.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":270477,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[239,244,2628,442,1030,87,865,1029,88,767,427,1025],"class_list":["post-270476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-palestine-israel-gaza-genocide","tag-brics","tag-china","tag-conflict-mediation","tag-conflict-transformation","tag-fatah","tag-gaza","tag-genocide","tag-hamas","tag-israel","tag-middle-east","tag-palestine","tag-west-bank"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270476"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":270478,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270476\/revisions\/270478"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/270477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}