China and Russia reinforce diplomatic front against Israel
Tom Rogan
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Presidents Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin will meet in Beijing on Tuesday. Russia will push for greater Chinese support for its war in Ukraine, Beijing’s approval of a gas pipeline, and deeper economic cooperation. China wants to consolidate Russia’s status as its junior partner in challenging U.S. global leadership.
Still, both Xi and Putin are also focused on increasing international pressure on Israel to end its war against Hamas. Putin emphasized that point in a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday. A Kremlin readout highlighted Putin’s push to “prevent further escalation of violence.” Putin has blamed the violence on U.S. policy failures and the absence of a Palestinian state. And in a striking rebuke of Israel, Putin compared its military encirclement of Gaza to the Nazi siege of Leningrad. That siege took at least one million Russian lives, including one of Putin’s brothers. Many died of starvation. That Putin would compare Israel to the Nazis was a clear public play to his Arab and Iranian partners.
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China has adopted a similarly hostile strategy towards Israel in relation to this latest conflict. Chinese state media has claimed that “the current U.S. plan of pushing more Arabic countries to reconcile with Israel has pushed Palestine to the corner, and Hamas’s attack is its last-ditch effort.” State media have even framed pro-Hamas protesters on U.S. college campuses through a positively Marxist lens. The Global Times argued that tensions over these protests are a result of what happens when “independent thinking clashes with capital[ist] forces.”
Speaking with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov on Monday, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi argued that the United Nations Security Council “must take action” over Israel’s response. Wang has condemned the “collective punishment” of Palestinian civilians, asserting China “will stand on the side of peace and justice and support the Palestinian people in their just cause of safeguarding their national rights.”
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What Beijing and Moscow really want is to ensure that their varied patronage relationships with Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Syria are not undermined by the war. They know that these governments are looking to them to weaken the Washington-led international support for Israel. Both Putin and Xi value their Middle Eastern relationships as a key means of weakening the U.S.-led international order. They’re also likely betting that Israel will forgive their diplomacy once the conflict is concluded. Beijing must be gambling, for example, that Netanyahu won’t end Israel’s precious support of China’s high-technology sector (including the People’s Liberation Army).
Nevertheless, this Sino-Russian strategy is risky. The unprecedented horror of these Hamas attacks means that the Israeli people and politicians may not so easily forget and forgive those who now stand against them.