China and Indonesia demand that Gaza halt hostilities

Following a meeting in Jakarta on Thursday, the foreign ministers of China and Indonesia demanded an immediate and permanent cease-fire in Gaza and denounced the humanitarian consequences of the continuing conflict that has claimed tens of thousands of lives among Palestinians.

Retno Marsudi, Indonesia’s minister of foreign affairs, told reporters that both nations agree on the need of a cease-fire and a two-state solution to end the Palestinian conflict.

“China has the ability to stop the situation from getting worse,” said Marsudi, who also stated that China and Indonesia “would also fully support Palestine’s membership in the U.N.”

The Chinese Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, met on the second day of a six-day journey that also included visits to Cambodia and Papua New Guinea.

Wang attributed the delay in passing ceasefire resolutions at the UN on the US.

“The half-year-long confrontation in Gaza has resulted in a unique humanitarian disaster of the twenty-first century. The resolution draft on the Gaza ceasefire was being reviewed by the UN Security Council in response to the international community’s appeal, but the US rejected it twice, Wang told reporters.

Before permitting a resolution to pass with an abstention in late March, the U.S. rejected a series of proposed Security Council resolutions because they failed to explicitly link the cessation of hostilities to the release of Israeli captives or denounce the Hamas assault that started the conflict.

While Russia, China, and many other council members supported demands for a cease-fire that were unconditional, American officials have maintained that there is a connection between the cease-fire and the release of hostages.

This time, the United States opted to abstain rather than defy global morality because it lacked the courage to do so. The US, Wang stated, asserted that this resolution was not legally binding. “International law appears to be a tool that the United States can use whenever it finds useful and discard if it does not want to use it,”

The South China Sea and the economic ties between their two nations were other topics of conversation.

China is Indonesia’s biggest trading partner, accounting for almost $127 billion in trade volume. With projected foreign investment flows of more than $7.4 billion in 2023, China is among Indonesia’s top foreign investors.

Wang is also expected to meet with President-elect Prabowo Subianto, who is now the defense minister, and Indonesian President Joko Widodo later on Thursday.