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China's Wang Yi tells Herzog that Israel must stop and reverse West Bank settlements
The two met in Baku on the sidelines of the CICA summit, Beijing's highest-level contact with Israel since the Gaza war began. Wang said opening routes into Gaza came first.
Key points
- Wang Yi said Israel should stop and reverse its "forced establishment" of West Bank settlements.
- He told Isaac Herzog that fully opening access routes into Gaza was the immediate priority.
- The meeting in Baku took place at Israel's request, on the sidelines of the CICA summit.
China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi has told Israeli President Isaac Herzog that Israel should stop and reverse what Beijing called its “forced establishment” of settlements in the occupied West Bank, the Chinese foreign ministry said on Friday.
The two met on Thursday in Baku, Azerbaijan, on the sidelines of the summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA). The meeting was held at Israel’s request and was Beijing’s highest-level contact with Israel since the war in Gaza broke out in 2023.
According to the ministry’s account, Wang put Gaza first. “The imperative priority is to fully open access routes into Gaza,” he said, warning that the humanitarian catastrophe there must not be allowed to spread. “Two million civilians must not be left to struggle on the brink of survival,” he said.
He repeated China’s long-held view that the Palestinian question is “the greatest historical injustice of this century.”
In Gaza itself, the health ministry said on Friday that Israel had kept the Rafah crossing closed to patients needing treatment abroad for a second week running.
Neither Israel nor Herzog’s office has given its own account of the meeting, and the Chinese statement did not say how Herzog responded.
The remarks come amid continuing settler violence in the territory. In the latest attack reported, settlers wounded a Palestinian man in the village of Beit Ummar. Israeli settlements in the West Bank are considered illegal under international law.