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China Media: Middle East Mediation
BBC NEWS, CHINA
May 7, 2013: Media encourage visiting Israeli and Palestinian leaders to restart peace talks but experts remain divided on how far Beijing can act as a Middle East peace-broker.
China Central Television and other state media have welcomed Chinese President Xi Jinping's four-point proposal for Palestinian statehood during his talks with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in Beijing yesterday.
People's Daily features a photo of the two leaders shaking hands and the headline: "China firmly supports the just cause of the Palestinian people".
Mr Abbas is due to leave Beijing tonight, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu heading from Shanghai to the capital tomorrow. Mr Netanyahu's visit comes amid high-profile state television coverage of criticism of Israeli air strikes on a military research centre outside Damascus on Sunday from Beijing, Syria, Iran and other countries.
In interviews with China Central Television and other state media last night, Mr Abbas backed Mr Xi's proposal and said he would be willing to meet Mr Netanyahu at any time if Israel accepted the establishment of two countries based on 1967 borders.
Chinese experts are generally divided on how far Beijing can independently mediate a peace deal on its own without international co-operation. In Global Times, He Wenping from the Institute of West Asian and African Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a state-run think-tank, says the West should be happy to see a "neutral and balanced" China promoting Palestinian-Israeli peace talks, especially since the US' mediation has been hampered by "favoritism towards Israel".
Prof Yin Gang, an expert on Middle Eastern affairs at the same institute, says Beijing is "very unlikely" to help break the deadlock in the peace talks or host such talks in China, South China Morning Post reports.
Li Shaoxian, a Middle East expert at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, a state security ministry-affiliated think-tank, tells China Daily that China can "hardly match", let alone replace, Washington's role in the Middle East in the near future.
