Chinese business is, by nature, more based on relationships than it is on contracts. The same will be true for any “sanctions” instituted on Israel.
In the past, Chinese authorities may have been willing to overlook some paperwork. Now, they’ll inspect everything three times. In the past, Chinese authorities may have turned a blind eye on some taxes. Now, they’ll make sure every single item is taxed appropriately.
You have any source on this? It’s one thing for the CCP to use this situation to make the US look bad but do they actually have any incentive to materially support Palestine? Seems unlikely they’d hurt their own trade over this.
China’s trade with BRI countries exceeds China’s trade with the West and the trend line sees BRI trade going up. Since the West is the only faction really supporting Israel…
Sure but that doesn’t answer the question. Maybe if there were a broad call from their other trading partners to take a moral stance but China is well known for not taking political stances they don’t directly benefit from. Again scoring some easy political points against the US is great but I don’t see them making any serious move here unless it somehow serves their interests (which is a perfectly rational stance to take, it’s not a criticism.)
I’m not hopeful when they won’t even impose sanctions on Israel, only undeclared “bureaucratic obstacles” at most, not that sanctions are the be all end all of diplomacy, but if anything merited them this would be it. You may counter “oh they have to be neutral so they can negotiate”, but I would say to that, what they have publicly said the furthest they are willing to negotiate is a two state solution, which is impossible to achieve. Not to mention the obvious problems with the Gaza strip and the west bank physically being separated and what problems that would entail, the Israelis will never accept a Palestine that gets a seat at the UN, a country that has it’s own air space, a country that has it’s own rights to nearby oil reserves, a country that has a right to assemble a standing military, a country that could offer a right to return to all of the millions of displaced Palestinian diaspora around the world.
All of these things are a non starter for Israel, there is nothing to negotiate, diplomacy will never compel Israel to entertain a Palestinian state. Unless countries do meaningful things like sanction/divest-from Israel, cut off the supply of weapons, oil, etc. and as long as the US is willing to veto any meaningful UN resolution, nothing will come of any kind of soft pressure, in regards to this offensive or in general. There is nothing to mediate, both the US and Israel have made it clear that Israel will stop when Israel has decided it’s in their interest to do so and no time sooner and no amount of arbitration will change that unless more direct meaningful pressure is applied to the state carrying out the genocide.
And meaningful pressure has basically only been applied by states like Iran and groups like the Houthis and Hezbollah no state with any significant leverage over Israel has done anything outside of Iran, including Russia, China, Turkey, etc. who all talk a big game supporting UN resolutions for a ceasefire and making public statements in support of Palestinians, but who refuse to take actions that would actually compel that to happen like divestment/sanctions due to the correct fear that states like the US/UK/etc. would respond in kind with massive sanctions that could hurt economic stability at home.
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