I know that the West is trying to pressure China to side with Israel and that that government has decided to not get involved but what about the people in the country? Didn’t China use to support the end of the apartheid there and stuff like that?

  • qwename@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    Q: Fierce conflict has broken out between Israel and Palestinian armed groups in the Gaza Strip, causing massive casualties on both sides. Does China have any comment on this?

    A: China is deeply concerned over the current escalation of tensions and violence between Palestine and Israel. We call on relevant parties to remain calm, exercise restraint and immediately end the hostilities to protect civilians and avoid further deterioration of the situation.

    The recurrence of the conflict shows once again that the protracted standstill of the peace process cannot go on. The fundamental way out of the conflict lies in implementing the two-state solution and establishing an independent State of Palestine. The international community needs to act with greater urgency, step up input into the Palestine question, facilitate the early resumption of peace talks between Palestine and Israel, and find a way to bring about enduring peace. China will continue to work relentlessly with the international community towards that end.

    State media (mainly Xinhua and CCTV) reports on both sides of the situation in Palestine and Israel in the same news article, like they have been doing for Russia and Ukraine since Feb 2022.

    There is this photo circulating around on Weibo (Chinese Twitter/X), which reads “坚决支持巴勒斯坦和阿拉伯人民反对美帝国主义和犹太复国主义的斗争”, which translates to something like “firmly support the Palestinian and Arab people’s struggle against U.S. imperialism and Zionism”. I might be wrong but this was probably taken around May 25 of 1967 during a rally in Beijing, or maybe in March 1965 when a Palestinian Liberation Organization delegation visited China.

    Israeli embassy is posting things on Weibo but they have to use the “select comments” feature to only display pro-Israel comments. Palestinian embassy’s Weibo stopped posting in 2012, their last post was about how the Chinese government and people have always supported the just cause of the Palestinian people’s struggle to restore their legitimate national rights, and included this picture of Deng Xiaoping and Yasser Arafat:

    People are still commenting on this old post as a sign of solidarity with Palestine.

    • power_serge@lemmygrad.mlOP
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      1 year ago

      Gotcha, yeah, I figured Chinese people would be much more sympathetic to the situation for the Palestinians. Kind of surprised that the Palestinian embassy stopped posting in Weibo. I guess it makes sense though.