Cycles of Conflict and Hope
International community calls for peace-making efforts to solve Israel-Palestine dilemma By Ma Miaomiao
In recent weeks, the Palestinian enclave of the Gaza Strip has been under full Israeli siege and airstrikes in retaliation for the October 7 attack by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) on Israel. The Israeli military has also cut off water, electricity and other supplies to Gaza.
About 2.3 million people in the 40-km-long Hamas-ruled region, almost half of them children, have been running out of drinking water, fresh food and fuel to keep generators up and running. Parents in Gaza now write the names of their children on their legs and abdomen, as they are worried “anything could happen” and no one would be able to identify the children, Dr. Abdul Rahman Al Masri, head of the emergency department Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, told CNN on October 23.
“This means that they feel they are targeted at any moment and can be injured,” Al Masri added. “The black ink is a small sign of the fear and desperation felt by parents in the densely populated enclave as Israel continues to pound it with relentless airstrikes in retaliation,” the CNN report continued.
As of October 26, the conflict had already killed more than 8,000 people on both sides. And at least 60 percent of the population in Gaza has been displaced from their houses, according to a press statement of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
On October 23, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi held a phone conversation with the foreign ministers of Palestine and Israel, respectively. Wang said all countries nd have the right to self-defense, but they should respect international humanitarian laws and protect civilian safety.
The way out
“May 4 has arrived, but where is our country? Tell me, where is Palestine?”— In his book Life and Death in the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict published in 2019, author Ma Xiaolin, now head of the Institute for Studies on the Mediterranean Rim at Zhejiang International Studies University, recorded a
question raised by a Palestinian man during a protest on May 4, 1999.
According to the Oslo Accords signed between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel in 1993, May 4 (1999) was supposed to mark the end of a five-year transitional period of autonomy and the achievement of Palestinian independence. But to date, that goal remains elusive. Negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis, two bitter enemies for decades, have long been stalled, resulting in a deadlocked Middle East peace process.
“The current Israeli-Palestinian conflict affects the whole world and involves a major choice between war and peace,” Wang said in his phone conversation with Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen.
The two-state solution [which calls for the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital, living side by side and in peace with Israel] is the consensus of the international community, he added.
The historical background of this solution is that Israel occupied the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and other places during the Six-Day War in June 1967. The United Nations Security Council has since twice passed resolutions demanding that Israel return the Palestinian territories it captured. But not only has Israel refused to return them, it has continued to expand its settlements there.
The root cause of the ongoing PalestinianIsraeli conflict is the failure to adhere to and implement the two-state solution, Ding Long, a professor at the Middle East Studies Institute at Shanghai International Studies University, said. He added that the result is that the tensions will escalate repeatedly.
China has put forward proposals for the settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in 2013, 2017 and 2023, respectively. In 2013 and 2017, Chinese President Xi Jinping put forward two four-point proposals for the settlement of the issue, stressing China’s firm support for a political
attention should be paid to the security concerns and legitimate rights of both Israel and Palestine. What we oppose is that the draft resolution attempts to establish a new narrative on the Palestinian question, ignoring the fact that the Palestinian territory has been occupied for a long time and evading the fundamental issue of independent statehood for the Palestinian people. It is worth being vigilant that the draft departs from the spirit of previous UN resolutions and embeds the dangerous logic of a clash of civilizations and the justification of war and use of force. If adopted, it will completely
dash the prospect of the two-state solution and plunge the Palestinian and Israeli peoples into a vicious cycle of hatred and confrontation.
China has no selfish interests on the question of Palestine. Any initiative that contributes to peace will receive China’s staunch support. Any endeavor that facilitates Palestinian-Israeli reconciliation will be pursued by China with all-out efforts. Since the outbreak of the latest round of conflict, China has actively advocated that the council take meaningful action and make binding decisions as soon as possible. We also emphasize that the actions and decisions of the council must respect facts and history, take the right direction and show due responsibility and accountability, so as to ensure that they stand the test of morality and conscience.
We are ready to continue to work with members of the council and the international community to play a constructive role in putting an end to the hostilities, protecting civilians, averting further humanitarian catastrophes and realizing a comprehensive, just and lasting solution to the question of Palestine.
(Source: Permanent Mission of the People’s
Republic of China to the UN website)