China Is Increasingly Hostile To Israel

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Chinese governmental statements mentioned that Israel's retaliatory strikes went beyond what was acceptable under international humanitarian law, ignoring the great efforts by the Israeli army to spare civilians that were used by Hamas as a human shield in violation of international law. Hypocritically, China refrained in official statements from using the word“terror” when reporting or describing Hamas' attacks, despite its long-standing formal opposition to terrorism.

Moreover, the Communist Party of China is encouraging anti-Semitic rhetoric in its state-controlled media. Chinese social media have seen a substantial increase in anti-Semitic pronouncements.

China is no longer free of prejudice against Jews. There seems to be evidence that citizens can even find themselves in trouble with the authorities for too vocally expressing support for Israel. Without any explanation, Israel's name no longer appears on major online digital maps.

China's insistence that the Israel-Hamas war be stopped as soon as possible is averse to Israel's interest in having sufficient time to eradicate the terrorist organization Hamas in Gaza.

Beijing's real motives

China pushes for a ceasefire because it does not want to see a wider, regional conflict.

President Xi was quoted by the state media as saying that a ceasefire was imperative as soon as possible to prevent the conflict from spiraling out of control. Such an expansion of hostilities could disrupt the global oil and gas supply chain, already strained by the Russia-Ukraine conflict. It also could derail the March 2023 Saudi-Iran reconciliation deal that China helped broker – a development China framed as indicative of a shifting global order.

Yet Saudi Arabia and other moderate Arab states would like to see Hamas – an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood – defeated by Israel, while Iran supports Hamas.

Chinese support for Hamas is also related to the US efforts to coax a diplomatic normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel, which have been disrupted by the armed conflict between Israel and Hamas. Formal diplomatic relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia would belittle the diplomatic success of the Chinese mediation between Tehran and Riyadh.

Given the Chinese perception of a decreased US role in the Middle East and the Israel-Palestine conflict, the Gaza crisis is probably seen as an opportunity for China to expand its influence and emerge as a mediator. There are signs that the Chinese may want to get involved in brokering a peace deal between Hamas and Israel to help build their clout in the region.

China probably realizes that the war in Gaza posits the American-led free world against Hamas, a proxy of Iran that is getting closer to Russia and China, rivals of the US. Moscow and Beijing have made a point of diverging from the Western-led support for Israel after the barbaric Hamas attack. China rightly perceives Israel as a democratic ally of the West, following in many ways the American preferences.