Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian on Sunday asked Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi to use his government’s influence to protect the terrorists of Hamas against Israel.
Iran’s PressTV reported that during a phone call with Wang, Amir-Abdollahian asked China to “use its diplomatic capacity to stop the Israeli regime from attacking civilians in Gaza.”
The Iranian foreign minister denounced Israel’s response to the savage Hamas terror attack as an “unacceptable” example of “collective punishment” against an entire population, a concept that has become very popular with Hamas apologists.
Every time Israel retaliates against an atrocity perpetrated by Palestinian terrorists, the action is swiftly denounced as “collective punishment” and met with calls for the Israelis to back down. The people issuing these calls do not seem interested in discussing if Hamas killing, raping, and torturing thousands of Israeli civilians is a form of collective punishment or what price Hamas should pay for indulging in it.
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Amir-Abdollahian told Wang the conflict in Gaza could “spiral out of control” if the Israeli operation continues, a threat the foreign minister and other Iranian officials have made in public several times.
“If the measures aimed at immediately stopping the Israeli attacks that are killing children in the Gaza Strip end in a deadlock, it is highly probable that many other fronts will be opened. This option is not ruled out and this is becoming increasingly more probable,” Amir-Abdollahian himself told Al Jazeera News in an interview on Sunday.
He gave the same warning to Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani earlier on the same day and threatened that “new fronts of resistance in the region” would open after he met with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on Saturday in Qatar.
China’s sympathy for the terrorists of Hamas is unquestionable, although the amount of political capital Beijing is willing to spend on behalf of Hamas remains to be seen.
China has, remarkably, gotten away with refusing to condemn the Hamas atrocity and has avoided even mentioning the terrorist group by name. Dictator Xi Jinping has yet to make a public statement on the crisis.
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Chinese state media adamantly refuse to show the shocking images of Hamas brutality, instead focusing their criticism on Israel’s military response and the hardships for Palestinians caught in the crossfire. When Chinese state media finds it necessary to refer to Hamas, they call it the “Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement.”
The Associated Press (AP) reported Sunday that the Biden administration asked China to use its influence with Arab powers to keep them from intervening to protect Hamas. China’s response was not enthusiastic:
Secretary of State Antony Blinken, while traveling in the Mideast over the weekend, called Wang to ask China to use whatever influence it has in the region to keep other countries and groups from entering the conflict and broadening it, according to the State Department, which declined to characterize Wang’s response. China is known to have close trade and political ties with Iran, which in turn supports Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
The conversation was the first high-level U.S. contact with China regarding the Mideast situation since the Hamas attack.
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The AP quoted analysts who said China prefers to remain neutral but seems willing to risk its relationship with Israel to expand its influence with Arab powers, which can help supply China with oil and join China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
Researchers Maria Papageorgiou of the University of Exeter and Mohammad Eslami of University Minho said:
China’s engagement in the Middle East is set to increase during this conflict. Beijing will play an enhanced role in efforts to end the war and secure its economic interests and wants to capitalize on the Arab states’ frustration with U.S. to establish itself as a great power in the region.
Freedom House research director Yaqiu Wang said:
On the Israel-Palestine conflict, the Chinese government has always propagated a narrative that places the blame squarely on Israel, a key U.S. ally, because this aligns with a key objective of propaganda: to undermine the U.S. in the international community. This time, it is no exception.
The Financial Times noted that on Thursday, the Israeli Foreign Ministry said Beijing’s response to the Hamas atrocity was “not appropriate” and did not recognize Israel’s right to self-defense, but on Saturday, Foreign Minister Wang Yi doubled down, remarking to his Saudi counterpart Prince Faisal bin Farhan that “Israel’s actions have gone beyond the scope of self-defense.”
Wang said Israel should “listen to the calls of the international community and the United Nations secretary-general to stop collective punishment of the people of Gaza,” echoing Iran’s favorite talking point about the crisis.