China responded to a US delegation of six, bipartisan senators visiting China and led by Chuck Schumer concerning the recent war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip by saying of it, “China is a common friend of Israel and Palestine.” Spokesperson Mao Ning continued, “We sincerely hope to see Palestine and Israel co-existing peacefully and sharing security and development.” He means there needs to be two states as a solution to this conflict.
This is the right approach to the intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But it was not the approach of the US Trump administration. Rather, President Trump took a very pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian stance, refusing to continue the peace process and sending his Jewish son-in-law Jared Kushner to the Middle East as a special enjoy, especially to Saudi Arabia, to pursue what came to be called the Abraham Accords Declaration. It has been an effort to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
But that effort was a shunning of Palestinian hopes for statehood. The Arab League, which has included Saudi Arabia’s membership, had always insisted that there would be no normalizing of relations between any of its members until the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was resolved. That, of course, will only happen when the Palestinians get their own state. I believe Palestinians have always been entitled to their own state just as Jews have been entitled to have their own state.
Jewish and Democratic Senator Schumer of New York expressed disappointment in China’s meager response to Israel’s suffering from Hamas’s attack, resulting in Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declaring “war” against Hamas. The US delegation actually met with China’s President Xi for 80 minutes. Schumer later said, “I was very disappointed, to be honest, by the foreign ministry’s statement that showed no sympathy or support for Israel during these troubled times.”
The Chinese ministry said afterwards, in response to Senator Schumer’s remarks, that China was “deeply saddened” by the civilian casualties. It explained, “The fundamental way out of the conflict lies in implementing the two-state solution and establishing an independent State of Palestine.”
I agree except that this refers to “the” traditional two-state solution–the State of Palestine being established in the separated territories of a Swiss cheese West Bank and Gaza Strip, joined by a twenty-mile corridor. I’ve been saying for over forty years that that will not work and Israel likely will never agree to it. Moreover, Bible prophecy indicates that a Palestinian state will be established as a very expanded Gaza Strip, and Israel will annex all of the West Bank. (I start with Isaiah 11.14.) For this to happen, of course, there must be a transfer of populations. See my book, Palestine Is Coming: The Revival of Ancient Philistia (1990). The most important half of this book is available for free reading at my website kermitzarley.com by clicking here.
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