[Source: Reuters]

China is willing to play a positive role to help the Palestinians achieve internal reconciliation and promote peace talks with Israel, Chinese President Xi Jinping told his Palestinian counterpart in Beijing on Wednesday.

“The fundamental solution to the Palestinian issue lies in the establishment of an independent Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital,” Xi said, according to Chinese state media.

Palestinians seek statehood in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, territories occupied by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war. Israel withdrew soldiers and settlers from Gaza in 2005 but continues to expand settlements in the West Bank and calls Jerusalem its eternal, indivisible capital.

Peace talks that were brokered by the United States collapsed in 2014, with no revival on the horizon.

“We have always firmly supported the just cause of the Palestinian people to restore their legitimate national rights,” Xi told Abbas at a welcoming ceremony at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People.

China has had historically good ties with the Palestinians and since Abbas’ last visit in 2017 has consistently talked up its capabilities in mediation, although with little to show in this regard until it brokered a surprise deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia to restore diplomatic relations in March.

Abbas is in Beijing on a three-day visit in which he hoped to demonstrate Chinese support for a Palestinian state, after failing to meet with U.S. officials while in New York for the United Nations General Assembly last year.

Last week, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken pledged continued U.S. commitment to both Israel’s security and a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, but said the expansion of Jewish settlements would be an obstacle to peace.

Analysts say Palestinians’ internal divisions have posed another obstacle. The Islamist Hamas movement that rules Gaza is sworn to Israel’s destruction, rejecting a negotiated peace. Abbas heads the Palestinian Authority that exercises limited self-rule in the West Bank and negotiated with Israel.