China, Palestine, Israel w/ Guy Burton

Background

Nick Zeller: For readers who don’t know, could you give a brief background on China’s relationship with Israel and Palestine before the Hamas-led attack on October 7^th, 2023?

Guy Burton: A lot of people assume that because China is a rising power, much of its relations to the wars in the Middle East are a recent phenomenon, but they aren’t. It’s had interactions with all the key actors there since the 1950s, but, obviously, in a different context. During the Cold War, it was in the shadow of the American and Soviet rivalry, and China was the junior partner to the Soviets. However, there was tension between the two socialist countries as well, and the Chinese were trying to find roots in the region. The United States and the Soviet Union were partnered with the countries in the region. If China wanted to make any kind of presence felt, it needed to interact with more insurgent groups, national liberation groups initially, like the Algerian nationalists, the FLN, and then the PLO in Palestine. In 1967, China saw the Arab-Israeli war of that year through the lens of the Cold War, through the lens of Israel as America’s ally and the Arabs as the Soviet’s. China, therefore, leaned towards the Arab side, and they supported the Palestinians.

After 1967, the People’s Republic of China was quite supportive of the Palestinians, and they even provided a little bit of military assistance. Things started to change from the 1970s onwards around the time that China joined the United Nations. It became more connected to the international system. In the Middle East, a number of different countries, particularly in the Gulf region, became independent, so it started to cultivate and develop all these diplomatic relations. China remained supportive of the Palestinians throughout and certainly at the United Nations where they spoke in favor of the anti-Zionist declaration. For the PLO, however, while it was good to have China on their side, the Soviets mattered more.

By the late 1970s, in the wake of China’s war with Vietnam, China needed to restock much of its material that had been lost on the battlefield. Much of that equipment had originally been Soviet-made and given its rivalry with them, Beijing wasn’t going to buy it from Moscow. So instead, China bought it through the Israelis. The Israelis acquired a lot of Soviet equipment when they beat the Arabs in 1967 and during the 1973 war. Israel had a stockpile of Soviet tanks and equipment. What you had during the 1980s was a clandestine arms trade between the Chinese and the Israelis. That provided the basis for a relationship that became formalized in the early 1990s, when they finally established diplomatic relations.

During this time, of course, the Palestinians shifted towards accepting that armed struggle wasn’t the answer and that negotiations were going to need to happen with Israel to realize the dream of self-determination. That was codified in the Algiers Declaration in 1988. The Chinese were always supportive of this. They supported the move towards negotiations. But what really happened, from the 1990s onwards, and particularly in the period prior to 2015, you start to see economic exchange happening between China and Israel, which ultimately becomes more important than the Palestinians in economic weight. Diplomatically, the Chinese supported the Palestinians, but on the other hand, all this economic exchange was happening between Israel and China, trading goods and services. China was interested in opportunities in Israel, from goods and construction of infrastructure through to investments in Israel’s IT and tech sectors. China found themselves trying to ride two horses at the same time.

This is where we were prior to October 7th.

But I should also say, that there’s been a lot of interest in China in the Middle East, particularly in relation to the Belt and Road Initiative and its growing presence economically. Israel was no different in this respect. However, probably around 2018 and onwards, there were shifts domestically in Israel as well as pressure on Israel from outside. On the latter, the United States was demanding that Israel be more wary of their relationship with China. In 2019, the Israeli government introduced an advisory committee to monitor foreign ownership of particularly sensitive areas of their economy. It’s not explicitly about China, but, of course, it targets China. And even before the pandemic began, trade and investments had started to dip between Israel and China.

There are a number of different factors going on, but certainly, I would argue that China has been consistently supportive of the Palestinians diplomatically, but the relationship with Israel has been growing and has become much more substantial on account of the economic relationship.

NZ: In what ways has China’s relationship with Israel and Palestine changed since the October 7^th attacks?

GB: What was very striking was that China didn’t come out with an immediate condemnation of Hamas’ attack and the taking of hostages. That was noticed by Israeli officials and people in the government. Ultimately, Israel is caught between America and China because of the U.S.-China rivalry, and, of course, Israel is always going to side with the Americans, and China understands that. China has never tried to put pressure on Israel to make a choice or to pull them their way. Perhaps because the economic relationship underpins all of this, it is a question of not upsetting the apple cart when it comes to the diplomatic relationship. However, because China didn’t come out explicitly and early against Hamas, that was noted by Israel. Israel pretty much decided they could not rely on China as much anymore. But already there was an underlying suspicion that echoed the pressure the Americans had been putting on Israel since before the pandemic.

NZ: For unfamiliar readers, could you describe the purpose of the 2024 Beijing Declaration? Have there been any tangible outcomes of this declaration?

GB: Beijing’s go-to playbook is always to talk about negotiations. For example, it’s been a consistent supporter of the Oslo process, even though the Oslo process is effectively dead and has been for nearly 20 years.

Perhaps because they had recently tried to play as a peace broker between the Saudis and Iranians in 2023, they saw an opportunity to be a peace broker in this conflict. But it was very clear from the very beginning that this was not going to happen.

Israel was never going to let China come in and be mediators because as far as they were concerned, they were much more sympathetic towards the Palestinians than towards Israel. In fact, this has been consistent. If you think about the way the Oslo process was first set up, there was this de facto division of labor whereby the Americans were the primary party when it came to negotiations, and the Europeans and the Americans were the primary sources of aid, and, fairly early, it became clear that the Americans have never been an honest broker. (Separately, of course, it is worth noting that there has been a debate in academic circles over whether you actually need to have an honest broker or not when it comes to negotiating peace.) Consistently though, the Americans have sided with Israel, and that’s been in Israel’s interest, hasn’t it?

The Palestinians have always wanted to open up the peace process and make the dialogues and negotiations more multilateral. But the Israelis always say no, they are happy with the way it is right now. They don’t have to say yes to it. There are people who are sympathetic towards the Palestinians – China, Russia, and even some European countries – but they’ve never actually followed through on it and put pressure on either the Israelis or the Americans to do this. Arguably, the reason is a matter of cost: is it worth pressing on this when there’s no certainty others will do the same? It would lead to a loss of credibility on the international stage.

So, just after October 7^th, when China finally composed itself and said it could maybe mediate, it was a non-starter. Certainly, there were others who were involved in ceasefire talks like Qatar and Egypt and they were already making the running.

So instead of trying to mediate between Israel and Hamas, China shifted its focus to the Palestinians themselves and the split between Fatah and Hamas. And the Palestinians themselves seemed quite receptive to it. Fatah and Hamas had their own reasons for taking up the Chinese offer. For Hamas, it was an opportunity for international diplomatic recognition. For Fatah, it was a way to alleviate and dissuade domestic opposition.

However, one meeting or even a couple of meetings in Beijing was never going to overcome the hostility and rivalry between the two Palestinian factions. Since the splitting of the Palestinian territory in 2007, there have successive attempts by the Qatari, by the Saudis, by the Egyptians, and various other actors to try and broker some kind of reconciliation talks between the two. They talk about it, but it never actually happens. This is what the Beijing Declaration was. It was much the same mold as before. It proposed a national unity government. But the thing is, there was no deadline. There were no timetables, there was no implementation plan. There was nothing in it that said: this is how we are going to enforce this. It was just a statement.

This also shows the limits of Chinese mediation. From their perspective, they don’t want to be seen as putting pressure on other actors. As far as China is concerned, they facilitated this discussion between the Palestinians and didn’t try and impose themselves on them and the resulting declaration. So arguably, the outcome was more about China’s image as a mediator rather than the substance of delivering a resolution.

NZ: How might China be considering its role in the Middle East through the lens of the U.S.-China rivalry?

GB: Given that they are caught up in this global rivalry with the United States, the Middle East is just one space among many for that rivalry to manifest itself. What’s interesting is that China doesn’t have to do very much right now to present itself as a responsible great power because the Americans’ actions are making them look that way. The United States’ response to the war has not been positive. Its consistent backing of Israel, to the point where it has been the sole permanent member of the Security Council to vote down proposed resolutions, marks it out as a less responsible global actor. If I went further, I would also argue that its inability or unwillingness to rein in Israel only makes it look weak and tacit in what have rapidly become Israeli war crimes.

Moreover, there’s not a lot of difference between how Biden and Trump are handling the Israel-Gaza War. The only difference is that Trump is upfront and frank about it: let Netanyahu get on and finish the job. Biden never was as explicit as that, but effectively that’s what he was pushing. Nearly all of the more than 2 million population in Gaza has been displaced. More than 50,000 people have been killed, over 100,000 wounded.

There was also the decision to take Israel and some of Israel’s leaders, including Netanyahu, to the ICC for war crimes and crimes against humanity, right? There is a very real public revulsion against what the Israelis have done, and the Americans are seen as abetting it. With that in place, China really doesn’t have to do very much to look good by comparison in the region. All they have to say is, “Look at what the Americans are doing. They are abetting this and generating instability in this part of the world because they’re allowing Israel to do this.”

Public Opinion

NZ: In the United States, the Israel-Gaza war has sparked fierce debate and protests. Do you have any insights on Chinese public opinion on the war?

GB: There’s been some scholarly work that’s come out in the last year that has looked at the reaction of Chinese netizens on places like Weibo and WeChat. It’s not a perfect proxy, but it’s a useful insight into getting a sense of what opinions are allowed in China, basically.

Based on these studies, in the weeks just after October 7th, opinions were a bit all over the place. It was not very clear what the public opinion was because there were sentiments that were sympathetic towards the Israelis, given the attacks, given the hostage-taking. On the other hand, there was revulsion towards what was going on in Gaza

By April or May last year, so six months afterward, when the territory had pretty much been leveled, another article looked at what the reaction was then. That sense of ambiguity had become very clearly critical of what Israel was doing and much more sympathetic towards the Palestinians. That has been consistent and has continued even more recently. Voice of America ran a story that looked at some of the responses on Weibo and WeChat in October last year when Israel filed its second salvo of missiles against Iran. There was a lot of public anger. (It’s important to keep in mind that this is not completely free public opinion, but it is the kind of public opinion that the government will sanction or condone.) It’s interesting that, at the same time as this public anger, the Chinese government was playing up its efforts to evacuate its own nationals from Lebanon.

Even with the riders I’ve made about how representative these sentiments are towards public opinion, it is the case that authoritarian regimes do have to be somewhat receptive to public opinion. I mean, just look at the pandemic and how they completed that massive U-turn on the Zero-COVID policy in late 2022 when it became clear that forcing people to stay at home was generating public backlash and anger.

NZ: Did you uncover anything about Chinese public opinion towards the United States’ commitment to Israel?

GB: The findings in these surveys I’ve looked at also links up with the Chinese framing of what’s going on. The Chinese leadership is looking at what’s going on in the Middle East not just at the level of individual state actors like Israel and Iran and proxies like Hezbollah and Hamas, but also through their geopolitical global rivalry with the United States. So it has to calibrate its response and actions in the region with one eye on how the Americans are behaving. Hence what looks like a decision to step back and let the United States draw attention to itself and its support for Israel by comparison.

At the same time, it’s important to note that China has to find a balance in its rivalry with the United States in the Middle East. It has made many economic investments in the region and generated trade. While a lot of it’s down to trade in hydrocarbons, oil, and gas, it’s expanding. It’s not just limited to oil and gas. There are a lot more diverse and deeper levels of economic exchange and engagement going on in the region. That level of connectivity between Chinese economic actors and their partners in the region is becoming more substantial. Therefore, it is in China’s interest for the region to be stable. So, whether it likes the idea of America being a regional hegemon and security guarantor in the region or not, it does benefit from the American military presence.

In sum then, China has to walk a fine line. Because, on the one hand, it is America’s military presence that provides some degree of hegemonic power and security. But on the other hand, it’s also criticizing the Americans for allowing actors like Israel to go rogue and destabilize the region.

What I think makes the current state of affairs distinct from what came before is the changed nature of the internal regional rivalry between Israel and Iran. The two have moved beyond the use of proxies and clandestine actions that enable each to maintain a cloak of deniability to more direct forms of confrontation. Look at the Israeli air strikes in April and October last year and Iranian retaliation.

Those direct exchanges taking place between Israel and Iran have probably been taken note of in Beijing. America is associated with that via Israel, which is good because it presents China as the alternative, more stable actor, which is a way of winning other regimes over in the region. On the other hand, it can’t go too far down that path because a lot of its interests will be threatened, especially as tensions ramp up between Israel and Iran.

NZ: If things were to escalate more between Iran and Israel, would Beijing step in militarily?

GB: There was a recent article by Kenneth Pollack in Foreign Affairs last October that I read as making the point that this confrontation between Israel and Iran is a dead end because, ultimately, what is the end goal? I know Israel has historically talked about hitting Iran’s nuclear sites as a way of taking them out, but we’re not talking about Iraq in 1981 or Syria around that time when the Israelis last did it, they are more spread out. There is no way for them to knock out Iran’s nuclear program. It’s impossible.

China’s presence in the Middle East is primarily economic. If you look at the number of military personnel that China has in the region, it’s negligible. They are not in a position to do any kind of monitoring. About a month or two months after October 7^th, when the Houthis declared that they were going to start hitting shipping in the Red Sea, the Americans and Europeans said they would police that. They invited China in, and China said absolutely not. They did not want to get involved for several reasons. One, they didn’t want to be seen as siding with the West. Two, they just don’t have the equipment there.

In terms of China’s ability to influence Tehran, they do have some leverage. But there’s a question of whether Beijing wants to use it.

Given Iran’s tensions with the United States and the West more generally, some leaders in Tehran have been much more explicit about wanting to see China be more present and more involved in the region’s security because that would make them a counterweight to America. But also, there are voices in Tehran who are concerned about becoming dependent on China. There’s a debate taking place in Tehran about how much they should work with China. And China is aware of this as well. Perhaps because of this, while they do hold some cards over the Iranians, they also recognize that they’re not in a position where they can dictate to them what to do. That would only push the more critical faction in Tehran.

At the same time, dictating terms to Iran would be problematic for them because it would violate one of the Five Principles of Peaceful Co-Existence: non-intervention. You can debate whether or not they subscribe to these in all cases, but they are making a great play at the moment to appear non-aligned. They’re not trying to impose themselves on regional actors. I’m sure that they’re worried, but they recognize that there’s a balancing act to play. And currently, they’re in a good position because they’re still getting a lot of Iranian oil at a discounted price.

NZ: In many United Nations Security Council resolution votes pertaining to the war in Gaza, the United States and China have voted differently. Often, the United States was the only permanent member to veto certain ceasefire resolutions. What does this tell us about how China and the United States are viewing the war differently?

GB: When it comes to the ceasefire, Netanyahu has his own reasons for prolonging this war. We’re now nearly 18 months into it. The war aims that they set for themselves, i.e., Hamas’, complete eradication and non-involvement in the government of Gaza – they set themselves a bar so high. The problem is that any ceasefire is going to have to involve some kind of engagement with Hamas. It is in Netanyahu’s interest to keep the war going because he doesn’t want to have a reckoning with the failure of Israeli intelligence, which would then expose his involvement in preparations for war. In addition, there’s his own acquiescence in Hamas’s rule in Gaza, which he saw as the price to pay for keeping the Palestinians divided before October 7.

Maybe America thought it was egregious what Hamas did, and so they needed to show support to their friend, but then they would rein them back a little bit. However, Netanyahu played Biden and knew what to get from the guy, and the Americans became too caught up in what the Israelis unleashed. Netanyahu had it good in several ways, because he had Biden in his pocket last year, and he knew that if Trump came along and replaced him, he would just give him what he wanted.

That’s kind of where we are. The Americans are very much by themselves when it comes to Security Council votes. They’re isolated. The other Security Council members are not disunited. In that respect, it looks good from an image point of view for Beijing because it makes China look like a more credible and responsible great power. It presents them as part of the global consensus, which is broadly in opposition to what Israel and America are doing.

Mediation

NZ: Despite the intentions behind the Beijing Declaration, China remains one of Israel’s largest trading partners. How has this impacted its efforts to be a regional mediator in the region?

GB: Well, I mean, there’s a couple of things to say to this. First, as with Iran, I don’t see China trying to leverage its economic relationship with Israel. Second, is it really in China’s interest to become a facilitator and a mediator, particularly in a dialogue that seems to have no lasting solution? I sometimes think when I hear these calls from China and others to open up the process and have multilateral negotiations: do these actors really want peace? Or is it purely presentational? Third, we should be cautious of viewing the Iran-Saudi agreement in 2023 as China taking a more diplomatic role in the region. Chinese didn’t start that process. China only came in at the very end, when they hosted the final talks and the signing of the agreement. It was a process that began first under the Omanis and the Iraqis. Those two countries had provided back channels for the Saudis and the Iranians to start talks. But even then, it was down to the Saudis and Iranians signaling to each other that they were receptive to talk to each other.

We are far from that happening when it comes to Israel and the Palestinians. And I don’t see China playing a substantive role in terms of being a peacemaker. This is where it becomes useful to determine what we mean by the idea of peacekeeping versus peacemaking, conflict management versus conflict resolution. China is still at the conflict management and peacekeeping end of the spectrum rather than peacemaking and conflict resolution. Getting from conflict management to resolution is a lot of work and requires a lot of effort as well as credibility and political capital to expend. I don’t know if China is at that point yet where it wants to make those kinds of calculations in the region.

NZ: Do you think that China’s trade with Israel makes them lose credibility with Palestine?

GB: China has relations with everybody. At least when I was based in Palestine, the Palestinians I engaged with at Birzeit University understood that the Chinese have exchanges with everyone. Even the Palestinians do economic exchanges with Israel. But then they don’t have much of a choice there.

Of course, I’m talking about mainstream Palestinian society regarding this perception of China. Arguably, the BDS, the boycott divestment sanctions movement, would like to see China take a more robust position. However, from the BDS perspective as well, their goal is to work on transnational relationships with like-minded movements, democracies with civil society. When you’re talking about somewhere like China, it’s much harder to do because civil society is viewed with some degree of suspicion.

NZ: How will Trump’s presidency impact China’s role in the region?

GB: Every day, it’s something new. Every day, he says something else truly offensive – it’s hard to keep up. My father recently asked me, “What do you think of this Gaza plan that Trump’s got?”

Do you take it seriously or don’t you? He’s got all his enablers around him who seem willing to humor him. For instance, I noted that Secretary of State Marco Rubio didn’t dismiss it completely out of hand, even as he was saying publicly that he was open to other people coming up with ideas.

It is frustrating to have to deal with such comments, but you can’t ignore Trump. He may have very little understanding of the region and its history and trying to make sense of what he really thinks and wants is beyond me, but when he says something you have to listen to him. You have to do that, not because of who he is, but because of the office that he occupies, as President. So I guess we do have to take him semi-seriously.

What does this all mean for the Sino-American rivalry in the Middle East? I don’t know, but I imagine there are going to be some things that we didn’t anticipate that will appear from nowhere and become very important. For example, if you go back to his first administration, they had an economic conference for Palestine in Bahrain in 2019 followed by a political plan in January 2020 which got no traction. Then later in the year, after Trump had pretty much accepted Netanyahu’s annexation plan there were the Abraham Accords which came out of nowhere and completely undercut the previous Arab position of no normalization with Israel until a settlement was reached with the Palestinians. So, it’s very hard to guess what’s going to happen.

From the Chinese perspective, it’s very much the case that they don’t need to do anything right now. They can just sit back and wait and see what happens. In fact, I’d say that China doesn’t want to put forward anything since they have said that solutions for regional security should come from the region rather than being imposed from outside. That’s also another way they have a dig at the United States: by contrasting the Americans’ tendency towards intervention against their own preparedness to stand back and let regional parties decide for themselves.

Adopting this position tells us something about China’s long-term objective for the Middle East, I think. I don’t think they’re interested in reforming or reshaping the Middle East. If you want to understand China’s priorities, think of it like an onion with many layers over each other – or alternately, as a series of concentric circles. You’ve got China in the middle: the priority for China is the homeland, the heartland, and then there are the circles closest around the homeland, such as the national peripheries – Xinjiang, the southwest, Taiwan, and so on. These are their priorities. The next concentric circle is the larger neighborhood. Places in Central Asia like Afghanistan, because if you have instability in Afghanistan, it is going to spill over into Xinjiang, for example. Southeast Asia, where Chinese influence is substantial; perhaps more so than the Middle East. Indeed, the Middle East in many ways is quite distant in that respect. So, is there an incentive to have regional stability and order? Yes. Is China going to be the one to impose it? No.