The four-day state visit comes amid hopes that China could help facilitate peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians.
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has arrived in Beijing with China expressing its willingness to help facilitate peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians.
State broadcaster CGTN said Abbas landed in the Chinese capital on Tuesday morning for a four-day state visit. It is Abbas’s fifth official visit to the world’s second-largest economy.
The official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that Abbas will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping during the trip.
The two are set to “exchange views…on the latest developments in the Palestinian arena, as well as on regional and international issues of mutual interest,” Wafa reported.
Abbas will also meet Premier Li Qiang, the news agency added.
The longtime Palestinian leader is an “old and good friend of the Chinese people,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said last week.
“China has always firmly supported the just cause of the Palestinian people to restore their legitimate national rights,” he added.
Beijing has sought to strengthen its ties to the Middle East, helping to broker a rapprochement in March between rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran and challenging longstanding US influence.
Xi traveled to Saudi Arabia last December for the first China-Arab States summit in a trip during which he also met with Abbas and pledged to “work for a quick, just and lasting solution to the Palestinian issue “.
Meanwhile, Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi was in Beijing in February, the first Iranian leader to visit China in 30 years.
Beijing has also proposed an unprecedented summit with Iran and the Gulf Cooperation Council, which could take place later this year.
In an interview with China’s state news agency Xinhua published this week, Palestinian official Abbas Zaki said China and the Palestinians were “closer friends than brothers.”
“I am very happy to see that China has been more involved in Middle East affairs after the China-Arab States summit last year,” he added.
The United States has sought to address rising Israeli-Palestinian tensions, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken urging Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to undermine the prospect of a Palestinian state.
Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations have been stalled since 2014.
