Kim Kyung-Hoon / Pool via EPA

China's President Xi Jinping, right, shakes hands with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on May 9.

BEIJING – An official visit to Beijing by Israeli and Palestinian leaders last week has prompted speculation that China may finally be ready to claim its place as a world power by trying to negotiate an end to one of world's most caustic conflicts.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met with Chinese President Xi Jinping within days of each other in Beijing – the two Middle Eastern leaders having arrived in the country within hours of each other.

"China's hosting of the two emphasized its active involvement in Mideast affairs and highlighted its role as a responsible power," declared an editorial by China's state news agency, Xinhua.

A more active role in Middle East diplomacy would be a dramatic break from China's long-held policy of non-intervention. With controversial business partners like Sudan, Libya and Iran, China has consistently ducked the political and regional strife of others to focus on natural resource extraction and trade.

To a long line of American leaders who have invested a great deal of political capital in the quest for peace in the region, a Chinese diplomatic shift could be a welcome development.

But some experts like Dan Blumenthal, director of Asian Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, wonder how much China is willing to risk entering this particular political game.

Feng Li / Getty Images

Chinese President Xi Jinping, left, gestures to invite Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to a welcoming ceremony held outside the Great Hall of the People on May 6 in Beijing.

"Right now China has the benefit of free-riding on U.S. security [and its] presence, so there is no incentive for them whatsoever to actually pay costs and take risks," Blumenthal said. "China has been fairly extractive in those areas and again for China to become a global power that exercises responsibility, you can't just reap the economic benefits."

Middle East experts in China have noted that the country has a fresh point of view unsullied by years of involvement in the region. It has a carefully crafted position of supporting the Palestinian cause -- dating back to 1965 when the Palestinian Liberation Organization setup an office in Beijing -- but also being a close friend of Israel, as its third-largest trading partner behind the U.S. and the European Union.

"The United States' slant toward Israel has long been regarded as a bias stance by Arabic countries, so this bias towards Israel is not helpful for President Obama when it comes to pushing forward current or future initiatives," said He Wenping, a senior researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS). "But China maintains good relations with both Israel and Palestine, so China's stance is viewed as more neutral than the United States."

Just how much political capital Beijing is willing to spend hammering out a deal that has eluded others remains a critical question – one that could be fraught with risk to China's relationship with the Muslim world. Would Beijing be willing to put its neutral position and substantial business partnerships in the region in jeopardy?

To be sure, Xi's meetings with Netanyahu and Abbas were modest at best in ambition. The two Middle Eastern leaders never met face-to-face. And Xi's "four-point plan" effectively parroted calls by the United States for an independent Palestinian state, supplemented with a firm call for the two countries' boundaries to be based on 1967 borders with East Jerusalem serving as the new Palestinian state's capital.

"I don't think China has some magical power at hand that can make the Israeli-Palestinian process move more smoothly," said He of CASS. "It is significant that Israel and Palestine both recognized China's role because if they don't want China involved, [Netanyahu and Abbas] would have never come to China. This shows they wish for and they recognize China's role in the process."

Whether their involvement is desired or not, past Chinese diplomatic history suggests that given the options, China in the short-term would likely continue a nominal role rather than put trade relations at risk.

But a silver lining is the affirmation that while China and the U.S. continue to have major political differences on issues ranging from Iran to America's Asia "pivot," there is room for the two powers to cooperate and engage on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

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Barack Obama on Friday laid a stone from the grounds of the Washington memorial to Martin Luther King Jr. on the grave of Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli prime minister assassinated by a Jewish extremist enraged by his efforts to make peace with Palestinians.

"Sometimes it is harder to embark on peace then to embark on war," Rabin's daughter Dalia quoted Obama as telling the family at the grave site on Mount Herzl, Israel’s national cemetery, Reuters reported.

In a televised speech Thursday, Obama appealed to ordinary Israelis to put pressure on their leaders to make a peace deal with the Palestinians. He urged Israelis to put themselves in Palestinians' shoes and recognize their right to "self-determination, their right to justice."

On Friday, the president also visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.

He spoke of the "wrenching power" of the memorial to the 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis in World War II, calling it a "sacred place."

"The state of Israel does not exist because of the Holocaust, but with the survival of a strong Jewish state of Israel, such a Holocaust will never happen again," Obama said.

At the national cemetery, Obama laid another stone — as is customary at Jewish cemeteries — on the grave of the man after which it was named, Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism who died in 1904 before realizing his dream of a Jewish homeland.

"It is humbling and inspiring to visit and remember the visionary who began the remarkable establishment of the State of Israel," Obama wrote in the Mt. Herzl guestbook, according to The Associated Press. "May our two countries possess the same vision and will to secure peace and prosperity for future generations."

'Won Israeli hearts'
Obama also toured the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

In the church, Obama was greeted by Greek Orthodox Patriarch Theophilos III, Father Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Franciscan Custodian of the Holy Land, and Armenian Orthodox Archbishop Sevan Gharibian.

An editorial Israel’s Haaretz newspaper said "Obama’s goal in coming to Israel has been achieved."

Mark Neyman / Israel government / Getty Images

President Barack Obama places a stone taken from the grounds of the Martin Luther King memorial in Washington D.C. on the grave of Yitzhak and Keah Rabin.

"He won Israeli hearts and gave Israelis a sense of security, in the hope that now they will take charge and push the leadership toward a peace agreement with the Palestinians," it added.

The Jerusalem Post said primarily leftist commentators had "lamented" that Obama’s visit had not focused mainly on the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians.

"Americans understand that it is not their country’s support for Israel that triggers the rabid hatred of America felt by so many citizens of Muslim states. Rather, it is what America stands for — freedom, liberty, tolerance, democracy — that is viewed by popular movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood, with its reactionary worldview of restoring the caliphate and Sharia [law], as the real threat to the region and to Muslim sensibilities," it wrote.

"Washington’s Herculean attempts in recent years to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict emanate from a desire to see both Israelis and Palestinians flourish in free, democratic states of their own. The vast majority of Israelis share that dream. Unfortunately, the majority of Palestinians still do not," it added. "A majority of Americans and their president are increasingly recognizing this sad fact. Others have yet to do so."

Later Friday, Obama flew to Amman, Jordan, where he had talks with the country's King Abdullah, an important ally of the U.S. in the region.

Obama concerned about Syrian extremists
At a press conference, Abdullah said his country was struggling to cope with the flood of refugees who had fled to Jordan from conflict-stricken Syria — about 460,000, roughly equal to 10 percent of Jordan’s population.

This, he said, was the equivalent of 30 million refugees arriving in the United States, relative to the U.S. population. One refugee camp was now the fifth largest city in Jordan, Abdullah said.

Obama said his administration was working with Congress to provide Jordan with an additional $200 million in aid this year. The United States already is the largest single donor of humanitarian aid for the Syrian people.

He said the United States had worked to establish a credible political opposition to Syria's President Bashar Assad, whose ouster, he said, was a matter of when, not if.

However, Obama said the situation in Syria would likely be difficult for some time to come and he was "very concerned about Syria becoming an enclave for extremism."

"Extremism thrives on chaos, they thrive in failed states, they thrive in power vacuums," he said. "They don’t have much to offer when it comes to building things."

Asked about the risk of a nuclear-armed Iran, Obama said he wanted to see a diplomatic solution to the crisis and that Iran could end it by satisfying the international community that its nuclear program was purely peaceful as it insists.

"This is a solvable problem — if in fact Iran is not pursuing a nuclear weapon," he said. He reiterated that he had not ruled out military action to prevent Iran getting the bomb.

King Abdullah said the Middle East already had too many problem.

"Any military action, whether Israeli or Iranian, to me at this stage is Pandora’s box, because nobody can guarantee what the outcome will be," he said. "We just don't need another thing on our shoulders."

Obama is due to return to the United States on Saturday.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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This story was originally published on Fri Mar 22, 2013 6:42 AM EDT

Nasser Shiyoukhi / AP

Palestinian activists vandalize a poster of U.S. President Barack Obama in the West Bank city of Bethlehem on Monday.

TEL AVIV – Among Palestinians there is a coming president whose approach is creating quite a buzz of expectation.

With apologies to the White House, it is not Barack Obama, who is set to meet with Israeli and Palestinian leaders on a three-day Middle East visit that kicks off Wednesday.

Indeed, his or her name is not even known. What is being awaited with mounting excitement is the winner of the latest reality TV show.

Called simply "The President," it is a search among the youths of the West Bank and Gaza for a candidate with the skills and charisma to lead a people still in search of their own state.

Some of the 1,000-plus hopefuls were gathered for a recording in Bethlehem over the weekend.

It was quickly obvious that these were well-educated, serious-minded young men and women thinking serious thoughts about the Palestinian territory's many economic, social and political challenges.

An irony was quickly apparent, too.

For many, President Obama's rise from outsider to Oval Office is an inspiration for their own ambitions.

But when it comes to helping realize their ambition for a Palestinian state, they have more or less given up on him.

"Not all Palestinians welcome Obama," said Bashar Falashat, a 26-year-old business studies graduate from Hebron. "Half see his visit as just a tourism trip. We need him to see the reality, to see how we are suffering, but most Palestinians believe that he will not change anything."

Several of the candidates think Obama's heart is with Palestine but his head is wedded to Israeli interests.

Twenty-one-year-old Akhla Salman studies psychology and social work in Jerusalem.

"I know America is the leading country for freedom and human rights, and I respect Obama because he is a good man," she said. "But between America and Israel there is a very strong relationship."

Near-zero expectations
Their near-zero expectations are being deliberately matched by the White House: Obama might be Nobel Peace Prize winner but he has no new plan to make peace between the Israelis and Palestinians.

Instead, the president will be in "listening mode" as he meets with Israeli President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday, and with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday.

According to a recent poll by the Israel Democracy Institute at Tel Aviv University, a majority of the Jewish public -- 51 percent -- believes Obama's attitude toward Israel is merely neutral, while 10.5 percent regard him as hostile.

Meanwhile, Israel's Arab minority sees Obama as being very much pro-Israel.

On the face of it, Obama's more passive stance ahead of the visit is good news for Aviela Dietch, a mother of three and someone with perhaps as little trust in Obama as in her Palestinian neighbors.

Lior Mizrahi / Pool via Reuters, file

An Israeli border police officer stands in front of a truck lifting a structure during its removal from the Migron outpost near the West Bank city of Ramallah on September 5, 2012.

"I don't find that it is his place to tell us what to do here," she said.

Born in Milwaukee, Dietch is one of the three hundred thousand Jews who have made homes on the West Bank – land seized by Israeli forces in the 1967 war and occupied ever since.

These settlements, illegal under international law, are widely seen as the biggest obstacle to a peace deal. They are eating up territory earmarked for a Palestinian state.

Dietch lived in a hilltop community called Migron, unusual because it was deemed illegal even under Israeli law. Last autumn, after years of court action, the government was forced to demolish it.

"It was gut-wrenching, heart-breaking, to leave," she said as she walked past the few cabins and a small playground that still survive.

Her home now is just a few hundred yards down the hill, in another Jewish settlement.

Asked if she would be prepared to sacrifice that in the cause of peace, she replied without hesitation: "Of course not," she said. "And I don't think it would bring anybody peace. To ask us to sacrifice lives and homes we have been building up – there would be a civil war. A civil war."

The settlers are by no means representative of wider Israeli opinion but they are a big power in the newly formed Israeli coalition government.

That's one reason why Obama seems to have concluded there is no reason to waste energy and political capital on pushing along a peace process.

The highest hope is to cajole confidence-building measures out of Netanyahu: the release of some Palestinian prisoners, or perhaps progress on a temporary settlement freeze.

Indeed, in media briefings, Ben Rhodes, deputy National Security adviser, has placed the Israel-Palestinian conflict last on an agenda topped by Iran, Syria and wider regional turmoil.

'Operation Unbreakable Alliance'
These are issues which matter much more to mainstream Israel, and the best place to measure the mainstream is Tel Aviv – the beach-side city that is more Mediterranean than Middle Eastern.

"Personally, I was more moved by Bill Clinton, but Obama is totally reliable," said David Malka, a 52-year-old taxi-driver who works streets that were protected by the U.S.-funded Iron Dome missile shield during last year's conflict with Hamas.

That's a practical demonstration of the value of U.S. defense aid worth $3 billion annually, not to mention American diplomatic clout, a sort of Iron Dome that deflects unfriendly fire at the United Nations.

"He is a hundred percent committed to Israel's security and on Iran; if the moment comes, the U.S. has proved in the past that they help when we need help."

As for Iran, Israel and the U.S. are clearly working on different timetables. Obama told Israeli TV last week he believes Tehran is a year away of nuclear weapons; Netanyahu's "red line" is this summer.

The two leaders have notoriously cool relations -- and this visit is Obama's first to the Jewish state as president. Many here suspect Obama doesn't quite get what it is to be Israeli.

But most are as confident as the Palestinians are pessimistic, that the fifth serving president to visit Israel will be true to the trip's branding as "Operation Unbreakable Alliance."

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Kevin Lamarque / Reuters

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton meets Friday with Northern Ireland First Minister Peter Robinson, right, and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, left, at Stormont Castle in Belfast on Friday.

Updated at 10:25 a.m. ET: BELFAST — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Friday condemned a wave of street violence in Northern Ireland, saying it showed the peace process she has long supported in the British province was not yet complete.

Making one of her last foreign trips in her current job, she visited a province transformed by the 1998 peace agreement that her husband Bill Clinton helped bring about in what was regarded as one of the greatest successes of his presidency.

But Northern Ireland remains riven by sectarian tensions and Clinton arrived in a week that has seen three riots, the seizure of a bomb over 62 miles outside Belfast, and the arrest of four militant nationalists.

The latest riot erupted Thursday night when a policeman was injured after protesters hurled missiles to vent their anger against nationalist councilors who voted to remove the British flag atop Belfast City Hall.

'It pains me': Clinton decries plight of women in male-dominated countries

Police said Friday that four men were arrested after a "viable bomb" was recovered from a car in a nationalist area of Derry overnight. A letter bomb was also found in a County Down postbox with the capacity "to kill or cause serious injury."

"It has been a sad reminder unfortunately that despite how hardy the peace has been, there are still those who not only would test it but try to destroy it," Clinton said.

"I really commend the leaders and citizens who have condemned the violence— and I join them in condemning it — to remind us all that peace comes through dialogue and debate, not violence," she added.

Important for 2016?
However, Clinton's visit, during which politicians from both sides of the political divide briefed her on the peace process, was a reminder of the huge popularity of her family in Ireland, a potential asset in attracting the Irish-American vote if Clinton decided to run for the U.S. presidency in 2016.

The province has suffered one of the world's worst property market crashes and its leaders are hoping for the kind of U.S. foreign investment that has transformed the rest of Ireland.

"Our need is more economic now than political," said Reg Empey, Chairman of the Ulster Unionist Party, who was a senior figure in the peace process.

Cops hurt as British unionist protesters try to storm Belfast City Hall in flag spat

"But we also have to be aware that there is still a degree of volatility ... and in those circumstances I think we should make sure we keep the relationship going," he said.

Peace process
Hillary Clinton traveled to Northern Ireland several times in the mid-1990s while her husband helped broker the 1998 Good Friday peace accord. His hands-on approach was widely recognized as crucial at moments when the agreement looked like crumbling.

Bill Clinton's work helped win over the Irish vote during his re-election campaign in 1996 and his popularity among Irish-Americans could rub off on his wife if she needed it.

Clinton on Thursday told journalists in Dublin she was "too focused on what I'm doing" to think about a run for the presidency and declined to comment on U.S. newspaper reports that her husband may be appointed as Washington's next ambassador to the Republic of Ireland.

Complete World coverage on NBCNews.com

Personal ties
As first lady, Clinton lent support to pro-peace women's groups in Northern Ireland and visited people wounded in the 1998 Omagh bombing, the deadliest attack in three decades of violence commonly known as the "Troubles."

At least 3,600 people were killed during that time as Catholic nationalists seeking union with Ireland fought British security forces and mainly Protestant Loyalists determined to remain part of the United Kingdom.

"The lessons learned here in Ireland about how to build peace could be of great use to other peoples and nations," Clinton said Thursday in a speech in Dublin in which she recalled a meeting between Catholic and Protestant women in Belfast in the 1990s.

"There are so many more ties that bind us than divide us, and that is what has motivated me over many years now," she said.

NBC News' Catherine Chomiak and Reuters contributed to this report.

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