80% of Palestinians want China to mediate with Israel, 60% do not trust the US

London: A whopping 80% of Palestinians think China is the best potential mediator to hold their peace talks with Israel. Unsurprisingly, the US is seen as the worst mediator.

China is among the popular choices after its success in brokering the Saudi-Iranian diplomatic agreement in March 2023. President Xi Jinping spent five days in Riyadh for the agreement on the restoration of diplomatic ties. In April, Beijing offered to broker peace between Israel and Palestine. 80% of respondents welcomed this offer.

A UK-based organisation YouGov conducted a survey at the request of Arab News. The responses find that Russia is the most preferred potential peace broker and the next most opted choices were the European Union and China.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the residents of the West Bank and Gaza chose the country because it has not betrayed those who pinned their hopes on it. "Moscow, as it stated in IPD’s comment to Arab News, continues to believe that the existing international legal framework, the Arab peace initiative in Al-Taif and the groundwork that has been achieved between Israelis and Palestinians throughout the negotiation process on the basis of (a) two-state solution can serve as a foundation for resuming direct negotiations between the parties to the conflict."

"Our position is clear, unchangeable, and not subject to political conjuncture. We are constantly talking about this to our Palestinian friends and the Israeli side as well," she added.

While 86% of Palestinian respondents think that the US has significant influence over Israel, close to 60% of them do not trust Washington to play peace broker.

Chris Doyle, director of the London-based Council for Arab-British Understanding (CAABU), told Arab News: "Palestinians have never seen the US as a neutral or fair broker. The (Palestinian) leadership has tolerated the US because, quite simply, as the world’s sole superpower for many years, (they) have had no choice."

"There are many, many reasons why Palestinians – including the leadership – have never viewed the US as that responsible broker. The US overtly states that it is pro-Israel, that it has a strategic alliance with the State of Israel, it routinely passes pro-Israel resolutions in Congress, and, of course, vetoes attempts to pass Security Council resolutions critical of the State of Israel and its conduct," he added.

He further said that Washington's position in the region is clearly declining because of the decisions of successive presidents going back to the Obama administration to pivot to Asia, to have less to do with the Middle East, and to try to avoid getting sucked into protracted conflicts.

Doyle does not think that the EU has the ability to broker peace between Israel and Palestine. He also observed that the EU needed to have the political courage to ignore any pressures that the US and Israel would apply.

Speaking about the EU being the second prefered choice, Doyle said: "The problem with the EU is that it is increasingly divided, with a lot of Central and Eastern European countries increasingly moving away from the international consensus that had existed since 1980. You have a core group of largely Western European states who do adopt sensible positions based on international national law. So the idea of the EU as a mediator right now seems rather far-fetched because it simply does not have the sort of unity which would allow it to play out that role."