Palestinian leader urges China to play a lead role in solving conflict with Israel
A Palestinian party leader said that China can play a wise role in solving the Palestinian- Israeli conflict, and China has a much more balanced position than that of other powers to thrash out an effective solution.
Secretary General of the Palestinian National Initiative Party Mustafa Barghouti made the remarks in an interview with Xinhua on Sunday.
The politician said the Palestinians need an effective and influential international framework with strong participation of a very convincing country such as China.
“It is clear that the US monopoly on the peace process has led to repeated failures and it is unable to be an effective mediator because of its absolute bias for Israel,” he said.
Barghouti affirmed that China en- joys strong and historic relations with both Palestine and Israel and has a firm stance in support of the right of the Palestinian people to freedom, independence and the establishment of a future state.
“We believe that an effective international framework with the strong participation of China can be a real framework for achieving a real peace process,” he added.
Barghouti stressed that the Palestinian side will welcome any Chinese peace initiative, “because the Palestinians trust China.”
During his meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Beijing in July, Chinese President Xi Jinping said China will host a symposium on peace between Palestine and Israel later this year to contribute wisdom to resolving the Palestinian issue. He said China is willing to participate in all efforts that are conducive to a political settlement of the Palestinian issue.
Commenting on the Chinese peace efforts, Barghouti said the proposed peace symposium will be very useful.
Talking about the US role in pushing the stalled peace process, Barghouti said that the administration of US President Donald Trump is more biased toward Israel than all previous US administrations.
“Since Trump took office, the pace of settlement construction increased by 70 percent and the US did not comment on this and did not take any action to stop the settlement expansion,” he said.
In 1947, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 181, which recognized the necessity to establish a Jewish state and an Arab state in the former British mandate territory of Palestine. The 1967 Middle East war resulted in Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights.
The last round of peace talks between Israel and Palestine failed in 2014, mainly due to the continuing expansion of Jewish settlements on the occupied territories of Palestine, which has become more rampant under the shield of US bias.