Relationship under a Glass Ceiling: A Framework for China-Israel Relations

Since their early years, Israel-China relations have experienced recurring waves of progress, halt, and recovery. These circles have been neither coincidental nor unrelated. Instead, they constitute a structural outcome of the relations’ fundamental features: their subjection to the China-United States dynamic and to a lesser extent to China’s Middle East policy. Sharing complementary interests over the years, both Israel and China have searched patiently for new ways to overcome this obstacle, and since the late 2000s, this has included more areas of interest and more active participants from both states. Positive as this development has been, this chapter demonstrates that it has also exerted a destabilizing effect on the relationship. While providing the relations with greater resilience than before, it gave Washington additional reasons for concern over the Israel-China rapprochement.