China’s President Xi Jinping has expressed China’s support for an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestine’s territories and voiced frustration over the “historical injustice” suffered by Palestinians.
“It is not possible to continue the historical injustice suffered by the Palestinians,” the Chinese president said on Friday at the opening of the Riyadh-Gulf-Chinese Summit for Cooperation and Development in Saudi Arabia.
Xi called for granting Palestine “full membership in the United Nations” and said Beijing “supports the two-state solution and the establishment of a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital.”
Xi’s visit to Saudi Arabia is his third journey outside China since the Covid-19 pandemic. He arrived on Wednesday in Saudi Arabia on his first trip to the kingdom since 2016.
On the third and final day of his visit, Xi said he considered the Chinese-Arab summit a “defining event in the history of Chinese-Arab relations.”
Relations between the two “are based on mutual interest in peace and harmony,” he said.
During the Middle East War of 1967, Israel occupied Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. It claimed to be Israel’s “eternal” capital and annexed the entire city of East Jerusalem in 1980; this action was never acknowledged by the international community.
It withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and has since imposed a strict blockade on the besieged Palestinian territory from the air, sea, and land.
Palestine views those areas as being a part of its nation, with East Jerusalem serving as its primary capital.
According to international law, the West Bank and East Jerusalem are “occupied territory,” and any construction of Jewish settlements there is prohibited.
Palestinians accuse Israel of waging an aggressive campaign to “Judaize” the historic city by effacing its Arab and Islamic identity and driving out its Palestinian inhabitants.
Almost 500,000 illegal Israeli settlers live in over 130 settlements dotting the occupied West Bank alongside nearly three million Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation.
