Mao sent them weapons and many of their leaders – among them the current president of the Palestinian National Authority, Mahmoud Abbas – studied in Moscow.
The historical sympathy of China and Russia with the Palestinian cause is no secret.
But in recent times, especially since the outbreak of war in Gaza almost a year ago, Beijing and Moscow have been taking positions in a new and unusual role: that of mediators in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
Last July, in the Chinese capital, Hamas, Fatah and a dozen other Palestinian factions signed an incipient agreement to form an “interim government of national reconciliation” to administer Gaza once the war ends.
The same groups had met in Moscow in February seeking a similar agreement.
Both China and Russia maintain relations with all the actors involved in the region, such as Iran, Syria or Türkiye. And, unlike the United States, which considers Hamas a terrorist organization – which prevents it from engaging in talks with them – Neither Beijing nor Moscow have any problem inviting them to dialogue.
Beyond whether this mediation will have any tangible results – the experts consulted by the BBC consider it unlikely – the question that many are asking is what the Chinese and Russians are looking for with these interventions.
The Palestinians have no oil or major natural resources. They are not a regional power and are very far from the spheres of influence of these two superpowers and the territories that each of them considers strategic.
So what do they gain by getting involved in one of the most difficult international conflicts to resolve?
Mainly, two objectives: obtain international influence and counteract the weight of the United States and the West in the world.
From Mao to Xi Jinping
Since the proclamation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the Asian giant has always been sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.
Its founder, Mao Zedong, perceived Israel from the same perspective with which he saw Taiwan: as a base of Western imperialism that had been implanted in the region to keep potential critics of the international order imposed by Washington under control.
The anti-Western and anti-colonial narrative of that new China “saw its own experience reflected in Palestinian suffering,” Ahmed Aboudouh, a researcher at Chatham House, explains to BBC Mundo.
What the Chinese Communist Party had called the ‘century of humiliation’, which began with the Opium Wars in the 19th century until Mao came to power, was now suffered by the Palestinians.
The support, furthermore, did not stop at rhetoric. Mao, who supported liberation movements around the world, sent weapons to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and greatly influenced its thinking.
Chinese foreign policy changed, however, with Deng Xaoping coming to power in 1978 and his “getting rich is glorious.”
To implement its vision of a socialist market economy, China had to reform and open up to the world, and to do so it had to move from ideology to pragmatism. Instead of supporting non-state actors, China was interested in expanding its diplomatic relations with the world’s large and medium powers.
The arrival of Xi Jinping to the presidency in 2012 changes things, Aboudouh points out.
Xi reinstates an ideological component to his foreign policybut always to serve China’s practical interests. And the conflict between Israel and Palestine perfectly embodies this approach.
From Stalin to Putin
Russia’s relationship with the Palestinians begins a little differently.
When Israel proclaimed its independence in 1948, the Soviet Union, under the command of Josef Stalin, was one of the first countries in the world to recognize it.
“At the time, Israel seemed to have socialist leaningswhile their neighbors continued to be European colonies,” Mark Katz, emeritus professor of Government and Politics at George Mason University, explains to BBC Mundo.
Israel, however, did not end up being a socialist country, and in the mid-1950s, Nikita Khrushchev aligned himself with Arab nationalism.
“The Palestinian cause was very useful for Moscow since, while the United States supported Israel, the fact that the Soviets supported the Palestinians made them more popular among Arab countries,” Katz analyzes.
But, While for the Arabs the Palestinian cause was a matter of principle, for Moscow it was simply a matter of convenience.
“They were not going to support it to the point that this posed a risk of conflict with the United States in particular, and they were never anti-Israel,” adds the expert on Russian foreign policy and the Middle East.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian hostility towards Israel is softening, and the controls that until now had prevented Russian Jews from emigrating to this country are lifted.
By the time Vladimir Putin became president of Russia in 2000, more than a million Israelis had some kind of heritage from the former Soviet Union, and many of them spoke Russian.
Since then, the Kremlin has attempted to strike a balance between its relationship with Israel and its support for the Palestinians, but relations with the Israeli government have cooled recently.
And even more so since October 7 of last year, when Hamas attacked Israel by surprise, killing more than 1,200 people and it responded with a war on Gaza in which more than 40,000 Palestinians have already died.
An alternative world order
China has become the world’s largest importer of oil and it is estimated that half of those purchases come from countries in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf.
Does this mean that your efforts to mediate the Israel-Palestine conflict are linked to your economic interests? For Ahmed Aboudouh, the answer is no.
“Many of the Arab countries have normalized their relations with Israel and those that have not done so yet, such as Saudi Arabia, are prepared to do so when the dust of the Gaza war settles. China has understood this and does not link these two issues”says the Chatham House researcher.
In other words, no one is going to stop selling oil to China because of the position it adopts in the conflict.
Its reasons would be more related to its rivalry with the United States and the image it wants to project internationally given its new position as a great world power.
On the one hand, “China wants to be perceived as a reasonable and responsible power who is interested in mediation and peacebuilding,” analyzes Aboudouh.
In addition, Beijing seeks to “promote an alternative vision of the world order to that of the United States,” especially in the global south, where most countries support the Palestinians, the expert argues.
And the conflict in the Middle East, one of the most complex and headline-generating in the world, is perfect for their interests, especially when the US – its great rival – and many Western countries are perceived as supporters of Israel.
Beijing already displayed this new role as an influential mediator last year by facilitating an agreement to reestablish diplomatic relations between two archenemies in the region: Iran and Saudi Arabia.
The bulk of the negotiations had been carried out by Iraq and Oman, and the agreement is still very incipient, it will not restructure the region, but the Chinese firm gave it international weight and Beijing managed, in some way, to reduce the influence of the United States. .in the Gulf.
However, “China has no idea how to unite the Palestinians or how to resolve the intricate conflict between Palestinians and Israelis. And it does not have great interests linked to the resolution of this conflict,” says the Chatham House analyst, specialized in Chinese influence in the Middle East.
Diverting attention from Ukraine
For Russia,The conflict between Hamas and Israel has been very useful in diverting attention from the war in Ukraine”explains Professor Katz.
Not only has the news cycle largely relegated the conflict in Europe to the background since last October 7, but part of the arms aid that Ukraine’s allies, especially the United States, sent to Kyiv, has been redirected to Israel since the conflict broke out.
“The Kremlin thinks that the West applies a double standard when it accuses Russia of occupying Ukraine while remaining silent about what Israel does with Palestine,” says the American researcher.
The Gaza war serves, in this way, to accuse the West of hypocrisy and to gain points in the eyes of the Arab countries: “For Russia, appearing better than the US in the eyes of the Arab public is enough,” says Katz. .
Acting as a mediator in the conflict between Israel and Palestine also has the objective, says Ahmed Aboudouh, “get out of the cold of international isolation” to which the West has tried to relegate it after the invasion of Ukraine, “and it seems that it has found partners willing to do so, especially among the Gulf countries, which continue to do business with Russia.”
Hamas, which took control of Gaza in 2007, has never been Russia’s preferred Palestinian partner due to its Islamist ideology, but this has not prevented it from working with them and even taking advantage of their relationship.
Part of Putin’s incentive to establish relations with the Islamist group, notes Mark Katz, “was ensuring that Hamas did not support jihadist groups inside Russia, especially in Chechnya”.
The strategy worked well. When Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, “both Hamas and Hezbollah supported Moscow’s position and have never taken sides with Russia’s Muslims,” adds the George Mason University professor.
Experts consider, however, that despite maintaining ties with Hamas, the Kremlin does not appear to have sent it weapons. For starters, Moscow would not want to risk Israel doing the same to Ukraine, the researchers say.
How are they different?
Some of their objectives may be the same, especially when it comes to undermining US influence in the region and in the global south, but the methods of China and Russia are very different.
For starters, Russia has become militarily involved in the region, as it did in the Syrian war, something China has no intention of doing.
While China seeks to preserve the regional order in the Middle East by adding some adjustments to serve its interests, “Russia wants to completely blow it up to restructure it in a way that benefits Russian interests,” analyzes Aboudouh.
For the Chatham House researcher, Beijing would like the conflict to be resolved with the establishment of a Palestinian state over which China exercises the greatest control nfluence.
The Kremlin plays, however, with other cards.
Moscow does not actually want to resolve the conflict between Israel and Palestine, but rather to pretend that they are looking for a solution, the Russia expert points out: “If it were ever resolved, neither of them (Israelis and Palestinians) would need Russia at all, they would turn to in economic development and for that they would turn to the United States or China.”
By this logic, Katz adds, “Russia benefits from instability, but not from too much instability. They want to have the pot boiling but without it overflowing”.
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