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Fatah Central Committee Vice Chairman Mahmoud Al-Aroud, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and senior Hamas official Mussa Abu Marzouq in Beijing, July 23, 2024.
Hong Kong
CNN
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China said on Tuesday that Palestinian factions, including rival Hamas and Fatah, had signed an agreement in Beijing to “end divisions and strengthen Palestinian unity.”
The announcement, according to China’s foreign ministry, came following reconciliation talks hosted by China on Sunday with 14 Palestinian factions, as China seeks to present itself as a potential peace broker in the conflict as Israel wages war with militant group Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said the agreement was “dedicated to great reconciliation and unity among all 14 factions.”
“The main achievement is that the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) has become the sole legitimate representative of all Palestinians,” Wang said, adding that an agreement had been reached on “post-war governance of Gaza and the establishment of a transitional national reconciliation government.”
It was unclear from Wang’s comments what role Hamas, which is not affiliated with the PLO, would play in any such arrangement or what immediate impact the agreement would have.The meeting comes as the future governance of the Palestinian territories remains in doubt following Israel’s repeated pledges to eradicate Hamas following an Oct. 7 terrorist attack by Hamas on Israeli territory.
The PLO is a coalition of political parties that signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1993 and established a new government in the Palestinian Authority (PA).
Fatah controls both the PLO and the Palestinian Interim Government, which was established in the Israeli-occupied West Bank after the signing of the 1993 agreement known as the Oslo Accords. Hamas was not a party to the accords and does not recognise Israel.
Mustafa Barghouti, head of the Palestinian National Initiative, who attended the Beijing talks, said they agreed that “all parties” should join the PLO and that the organisation was the only legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.
There is a long history of bitter hostility between Hamas and Fatah. The two sides have tried multiple times to reach an agreement to unite the two separate Palestinian territories under one governance but failed, with a 2017 accord quickly collapsing in violence.
The Palestinian Authority was in charge of administrative administration of the Gaza Strip until 2007, after Hamas won the 2006 parliamentary elections and was expelled from the occupied territories. Since then, Hamas has controlled the Gaza Strip, while the Palestinian Authority governs parts of the West Bank.
Under pressure from Arab countries, led by Egypt, Hamas and Fatah signed a reconciliation agreement in Cairo in October 2017. The deal meant that a new unity government would take administrative control of Gaza two months later, ending a decade of conflict that began when Hamas violently expelled the Palestinian Authority from Gaza in 2007.
But the grand ambitions of the deal quickly unravelled: Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Rahmi Hamdallah was the target of an assassination attempt when a bomb exploded near his motorcade during a visit to Gaza in March 2018. Hamdallah’s Fatah party was quick to blame Hamas for the attack.
Barghouti said the latest attempt at reconciliation between the Palestinian factions was “much more advanced” than previous efforts and included “concrete steps” towards forming a government based on the agreement.
He told CNN that the war in Gaza had brought the factions together as a common front against the Israeli occupation.
“There was a very clear sense that Israel’s actions really were threatening to everyone,” he said, “and in that sense, the sense of unity on the Israeli side is very clear here.”
He said the new government would ensure the unity of the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, effectively “blocking” Israeli efforts to govern both areas after the war and maintain its occupation of the Gaza Strip.
But Tahani Mustafa, senior Palestine analyst at the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank, said most Palestinians would greet the news of a settlement with “the usual cautiousness and pessimism.”
“The major issues that have been obstacles to reconciliation in the past have not been resolved,” she told CNN. “In particular, the biggest obstacle so far has been (Palestinian Authority Chairman and Fatah leader) Mahmoud Abbas’s absolute unwillingness to give up his monopoly on power in any way, which makes it very unlikely that anything substantial will come out of this.”
Hamas is not opposed to the PLO but is demanding equal representation within the organisation, she said, and “Abbas has been reluctant to provide this because it would mean losing hegemony over the last Palestinian political institution, which is controlled by Fatah.”
At a press conference in Beijing on Tuesday, Hamas envoy Mousa Abu Marzouk defended the group’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, saying an agreement had been reached to complete a “reconciliation process.”
“We are at a historic crossroads. The people are rising up to struggle,” Abu Marzouk said, according to a translation provided by China’s Foreign Ministry, adding that the October 7 operation had “brought about great changes internationally and regionally.”
Beijing has not explicitly condemned Hamas for the October 7 attack on Israel.
Tuesday’s agreement follows talks between Hamas and Fatah hosted by Beijing in April.
China, which has sought to strengthen its influence and ties in the Middle East in recent years, has condemned Israel’s war in Gaza since the conflict began and has presented itself as a leading voice for southern hemisphere countries seeking the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Chinese President Xi Jinping called for an international peace conference during a meeting with Arab leaders in May and has sent an envoy to the Middle East to meet with diplomats and government officials.
Observers have questioned the extent of China’s geopolitical influence in a region where the United States has long been the dominant power, but China surprised many last March by playing a role in brokering a rapprochement between longtime rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran.
These efforts are widely seen as part of Beijing’s efforts to position itself as a geopolitical power with a different world view from the United States.
Tuesday’s agreement was signed as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was visiting the United States and is due to meet with senior U.S. officials and address Congress.
Israel launched a military operation in the Gaza Strip in response to an October 7 Hamas attack that killed more than 1,100 people and kidnapped about 250. The conflict has left some 39,000 Palestinians dead, causing a massive humanitarian crisis and widespread destruction.
