Xi Jinping says China supports Palestine with 1967 borders

President Xi Jinping has expressed China's support for end to Israeli occupation of Palestine's territories and voiced frustration over the "historical injustice" suffered by Palestinians.

"It is not possible to continue the historical injustice suffered by the Palestinians," the Chinese president said on Friday at the opening of the Riyadh-Gulf-Chinese Summit for Cooperation and Development in Saudi Arabia.

Xi called for granting Palestine "full membership in the United Nations" and said Beijing "supports the two-state solution and the establishment of a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital."

Xi's visit to Saudi Arabia is his third journey outside China since Covid-19 pandemic. He arrived on Wednesday in Saudi Arabia in his first trip to the kingdom since 2016.

On the third and final day of his visit, Xi said he considered the Chinese-Arab summit a "defining event in the history of Chinese-Arab relations."

Relations between the two "are based on mutual interest in peace and harmony," he said.

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Israeli occupation 

Israel occupied the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza during the 1967 Middle East War. It annexed the entire East Jerusalem city in 1980, claiming it as Israel's "eternal" capital — a move never recognised by the international community.

It pulled back from Gaza in 2005 and has since then maintained a harsh blockade from land, sea and air on the besieged Palestinian enclave. 

Palestine sees those territories as part of its country, with East Jerusalem its heartland and ultimate capital. 

International law views the West Bank and East Jerusalem as "occupied territory" and considers all Jewish settlement-building activity on the land to be illegal.

Palestinians accuse Israel of waging an aggressive campaign to "Judaize" the historic city by effacing its Arab and Islamic identity and driving out its Palestinian inhabitants.

Almost 500,000 illegal Israeli settlers live in over 130 settlements dotting the occupied West Bank alongside nearly three million Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation.

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