China should cooperate with US to de-escalate Israel-Gaza war

The stability that working with the US in the Middle East could provide would far outweigh any irritation among China’s strategic partners
Collaboration could also open the door to progress on other sensitive issues, such as rising tensions in the South China Sea

Emanuele Scimia

Published: 5:30am, 27 Oct 2023

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China should coordinate with the United States to de-escalate Israel’s war against Hamas, even at the risk of irritating strategic partners in Russia and Iran. For a commercial powerhouse such as China, the advantages of cooperation with Washington for stability in the Middle East far outweigh those of trying to capitalise on a scenario in which the US remains stuck in two wars.

The idea that the current course of geopolitical events is a strategic windfall for China in its competition with the US has proved popular in several quarters. Some say the conflict between Israel and Hamas, as well as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, will distract Washington from the Indo-Pacific, to China’s benefit.

Washington’s support for Israel, as opposed to Beijing’s “neutral” position on the conflict, would also gain the Chinese more influence in the Middle East – and the whole Global South – including a potential mediation role in the Israel-Palestine dispute.

That all seems dubious. China’s rise over the past four decades has also been built on the absence of major military confrontations. In contrast, the war in Ukraine and the chaos in the Middle East are having global reverberations at a time when the world economy is struggling to regain momentum.

China needs a stable geopolitical environment to consolidate its post-pandemic economic recovery. US troubles, from Eastern Europe to Gaza, cannot offset the commercial losses caused by ongoing wars. In China’s plans, Ukraine and the Middle East should be key transit points for its trade with Europe under the Belt and Road Initiative, but instead they are now battlegrounds.

Security instability is already negatively affecting some sections of the belt and road. For instance, take the US$62 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, which is beset with security concerns because of the persistent threats of separatists and Islamist militants. The idea that China can play a brokering role between Israel and the Palestinians, provided this is its true intention, is also questionable.

After a meeting in Qatar on October 19 with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov, China’s Middle East envoy Zhai Jun said Beijing was communicating and coordinating with Moscow on the Palestinian issue. This is a non-starter.

Russia does not have levers to persuade Israel to reduce military pressure over the Gaza Strip. Worse, China has irked Israel with a position that can be viewed as a sort of pro-Palestine neutrality, similar to its “indirect” support for the Kremlin in its invasion of Ukraine.

Beijing should pragmatically recognise the strategic distribution of power in the Middle East. Only the US can mitigate Israel’s response against Hamas’ recent terrorist attacks. Its shuttle diplomacy between Israel and Arab countries has at least unblocked some humanitarian assistance to the population of Gaza and may well have delayed an Israeli ground incursion into the strip that could set the entire region on fire.

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Over 100 trucks at Egypt’s Rafah crossing wait to deliver aid into besieged Gaza Strip

And while the US works to restrain the Israeli government, China could use its influence to deter Iran from expanding the conflict through its proxies such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Shiite armed militias in Syria. It would be win-win.

Beijing should also calculate that too close an alignment with Tehran risks leaving space for India’s strategic advances in the Middle East. India has grown closer to Israel in recent years, especially thanks to trade and defence cooperation. Unlike the Chinese government, New Delhi voiced strong support for Israel after Hamas’ aggression and condemned the terror attacks.

To China’s chagrin, the prospect of quadrilateral cooperation between India, the US, Israel and Europe in the Middle East is not implausible – take, for example, the project sponsored by Washington to create an India-Middle East-Europe economic corridor as an alternative to the Belt and Road Initiative.

With such collaboration, after the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue between India, the US, Japan and Australia, Beijing would have to face another combination of forces that, in some way or another, have a score to settle with it – including Israel.

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China and Russia are keen to establish a new world order, replacing the one led by the United States, but if this is its prelude, it does not seem that great. First Ukraine, then the Middle East. Not to mention that a new armed confrontation between Azerbaijan and Armenia in the Caucasus might break out, with the former seeking land access to its Nakhchivan exclave through Armenian territory, counting on the backing of Turkey.

This is a complex moment, and the two superpowers must find a way to collaborate where they can. This is possible, as the Pentagon has implicitly revealed. In its annual report on China’s military, which was released last week, the US Department of Defence said that in April the Chinese military had requested US assistance to evacuate Chinese diplomats from Khartoum in war-torn Sudan. It reported that US troops ensured evacuation routes for Chinese personnel.

In the end, President Xi Jinping himself said at the recent Belt and Road Forum in Beijing that “geopolitical rivalry, ideological confrontations are not a choice for us”. Perhaps it is time to not only talk the talk but also walk the walk.

Cooperation in the Middle East could be conducive to concrete dialogue on other flashpoints, first and foremost the South China Sea, where confrontation between China and a US treaty ally, the Philippines, is surging to alarming levels.

Emanuele Scimia is an independent journalist and foreign affairs analyst