The Palestinian Authority’s pivot to China shows it has finally given up on the U.S.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on 14 June 2023
Mitchell Plitnick writes in Mondoweiss:
Diplomacy often means finding a balance between an ideological or values-based position and a pragmatic one. This can mean, especially for leaders of less powerful bodies, walking a fine line and making very difficult decisions between standing for justice and standing for critical national interests.
That was the sort of decision Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was faced with in China last week. As with so many difficult decisions and critical tests of leadership, Abbas failed this one and came away with little gain and much to answer for.
We shouldn’t minimize the difficulty of Abbas’ position. He had journeyed to China, the first Arab leader to visit Beijing since Chinese Premier Xi Jinping won what is certain to be the latest in a long line of electoral victories for him. He’s hoping to find a path for China to claim a role in the effort to realize Palestinian rights and achieve some sort of diplomatic resolution with Israel.
It’s a quixotic effort, at best, yet it’s also one Abbas should have pursued a long time ago. For years, the feckless policies of the United States have deferred to Israeli desires and treated Palestinian rights as an afterthought at best. But it seems Abbas and his cronies in the Palestinian Authority have finally been forced to acknowledge that the United States is never going to be willing or able to deliver on its blatantly dishonest promises of a solution, two-state or otherwise, to Israel’s ongoing dispossession of Palestinian lands and denial of Palestinian rights.
As such, there is some good in Abbas’ journey to China, though there will be little to show for it in the immediate foreseeable future. But, in an apparent effort to win the favor of the Chinese government, Abbas also defended and even justified Beijing’s massive program of oppression against the Uyghur and other Muslim communities in Xinjiang. That carried a higher price than Abbas probably realizes.
Turning to China, away from the U.S.
Abbas’ decision to turn to China may be viewed by some as an expression of Palestinian “frustration” with the United States. It certainly would be a well-founded reaction. One U.S. administration after another, regardless of political party or ideological affiliation, has enabled and strengthened Israel’s impunity, settlement expansion, denial of Palestinian rights, and draconian measures in its occupation. Every one, without exception, has accepted unquestioningly “Israel’s right to defend itself” whenever Israel rained down massive destruction in the West Bank and, especially, in Gaza while, simultaneously, treating every Palestinian attack—whether it was indiscriminate or directed at civilian targets, or it was armed resistance aimed at an occupying army, which is clearly legal under international law—as the worst crime ever committed.