Joint efforts urged to solve Palestinian issue

Amid growing calls to end sporadic violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, China has urged the international community to work together immediately and find a lasting solution to the crisis, saying the world cannot be accustomed to the violence nor let it go unchecked.

Speaking at a United Nations Security Council open debate on the Middle East on Tuesday, Zhang Jun, China's permanent representative to the UN, stressed the need to adhere to the two-state solution and promote the resumption of peace talks.

Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Qin Gang recently had separate phone calls with the Palestinian and Israeli foreign ministers and encouraged Israel and Palestine to show political courage and take steps toward resuming peace talks on the basis of the two-state solution.

Tor Wennesland, UN special coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, said the trajectory of unrest in the Israel-Palestine conflict was neither sustainable nor inevitable.

Observers and analysts said a fresh approach with broader international community engagement could help turn the tide.

They are hopeful that a similar outcome, like the China-brokered peace deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran, could be replicated, as the West was not well placed to resolve the conflict between Israel and Palestine, owing to support for the normalization of Arab-Israeli ties in the absence of a political solution accorded to Palestinian rights.

Peace process

Haydar Oruc, a Middle East analyst and former researcher at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies in Turkiye, told China Daily that although it is not expected that all issues between Israel and Palestine will be resolved in the near future, it seems possible that a new peace process will begin in a short time.

He said China's initiative in the Middle East region and its attempts to solve the existing problems and its progress in the Saudi-Iranian agreement have increased expectations from Beijing.

"Because China is not a party to the conflicts like the US, but by approaching both (Israel and Palestine) at an equal distance, it facilitates the solution and with this position, it is positively different from the US. It would not be wrong to expect progress on this issue in the near future, since Russia and China used similar discourses in the last session," Oruc said.

Also at the UN meeting, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov urged all parties not to give up attempts to achieve the two-state solution.

"While this point has always been raised by the Palestinians, it's now being raised by a superpower, Russia, probably due to its own experience in East Europe, where the US and the EU have been playing similar destructive roles," Muslim Imran, director at the Asia Middle East Center for Research and Dialogue, told China Daily.

Belal Alakhras, a political analyst and Palestinian researcher at the University of Malaya in Malaysia, noted that while other countries in the region have been able to find common ground and respect differences, the situation with the Israeli occupation remains different.

"The international community may need to become more involved to counterbalance the US support for Israeli actions," he added.