The Flag of Palestinian Peace Flies Over the Great Wall of China
Diplomacy Without Borders
The flag of Palestinian peace flies over the Great Wall of China as Beijing mediates the signing of a national unity agreement among 14 Palestinian factions, including Fatah and Hamas, and for the first time since the war began, welcomes Kyiv’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba.
While the United States is entangled in a convoluted election campaign, China’s diplomacy seizes the opportunity to carve out a place in the spotlight. Yesterday in Beijing, 14 Palestinian factions, including Hamas and Fatah, signed a national unity agreement aimed at maintaining Palestinian control over the West Bank and Gaza after the war ends.
This agreement, finalized after three days of intense talks, lays the foundations for a temporary national reconciliation government and, according to Al Jazeera, rests on four main pillars: establishing a temporary national unity government, forming a unified Palestinian leadership ahead of future elections, free elections for a new Palestinian National Council, and a public declaration of unity against ongoing Israeli attacks. However, the real turning point is the reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah, the two main Palestinian political parties, which have been bitter rivals since the conflict began in 2006, after which Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip, from where it attacked Israel on October 7.
Mustafa Barghouti, the Secretary-General of one of the 14 signing factions, explained that the ongoing war was the main factor that forced Palestinian parties to set aside their differences, which, according to him, makes this agreement go far beyond any other reached in recent years. He added that currently, there is no option but to unite and fight together against this terrible injustice.
Israel Under Pressure
For the Israeli government, which has made the destruction of Hamas one of the declared goals of its attack on Gaza, this agreement is unacceptable.
Yisrael Katz, the Foreign Minister, wrote on the social network X that Mahmoud Abbas embraces the murderers and aggressors of Hamas instead of rejecting terrorism, revealing his true face. He added that, in reality, this will never happen because the Hamas government will be crushed, and Abbas will only observe Gaza from afar.
Israel’s security will remain exclusively in Israel’s hands.
Notably, in the criticisms made by Israeli officials, there has been no mention of Beijing’s role so far.
The announcement of the agreement comes at a sensitive time for Israel, as Benjamin Netanyahu delivers his controversial speech in the U.S. Congress during an official visit to Washington.
The Prime Minister will then have to deal with recent changes in U.S. domestic policy, where Joe Biden recently announced his withdrawal from the election campaign.
Vice President Kamala Harris, who is vying for Biden’s place in the White House, has repeatedly criticized the way Israel conducts its war against Hamas in the past. This fuels suspicions that she might adopt a tougher stance on Israel if she wins the election.
Meanwhile, China maintains good relations with the Jewish state, even though it has supported the Palestinian cause for decades. China is in favor of a two-state solution and has previously recognized the state of Palestine.
Caution is the Wise Course
Analysts are cautious about the agreement reached in Beijing, which Chinese media quickly touted as a diplomatic success.
This is only the latest in a long series of reconciliation agreements between the two negotiating factions that have subsequently broken down.
A similar agreement was signed again in 2022, thanks to Beijing’s mediation, by 14 Palestinian groups in Algiers. To date, none of these efforts have made significant progress in bridging the gap between Hamas and Fatah.
Even among Gazan Palestinians, who have been grappling with the devastation of the conflicts, the announcement was met with skepticism.
Kari Thabet, a resident of the Strip, contacted by The Washington Post by phone, said, ‘Come to the ground and look at the hospitals where there isn’t even a drop of blood to save lives. Look at the people in the northern part of the Gaza Strip who are dying of hunger.’
Look at how Israeli tanks move around unhindered. These people in Beijing do not represent me; they are just failed actors.
What complicates the situation further is the timing of this initiative, which comes at the most tense moment between the two factions.
Mahmoud Abbas, the President of the Palestinian Authority, recently stated that Hamas bears the legal, moral, and political responsibility for prolonging the war in Gaza.
In turn, Hamas leaders accused the President of the Palestinian Authority of supporting Israel and the United States to maintain his position, despite his mandate ending in 2009.
Diplomatic Success for Beijing
However, past failures and current divisions do not seem to discourage Beijing, which previously hosted negotiations between Hamas and Fatah in April.
After signing the statement, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that reconciliation is an internal issue for the Palestinian factions, but it cannot be achieved without international community support.
For China, what was signed on July 23 is a diplomatic success in any case, as it resumes the mediator role in the Middle East that Beijing has long aspired to. This conflict began as China was already starting to play a more active role in international politics. Last year, Beijing mediated an agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, leading to the restoration of diplomatic relations between the two countries for the first time since 2016. Even before that, in December 2022, President Xi Jinping co-chaired the China-Gulf Cooperation Council in Riyadh, resulting in several trade agreements.
But an important point is that through these mediations, the Chinese leader promotes the vision of a new and alternative global order and repeatedly criticizes the failures of U.S. hegemony.
Another significant signal from this perspective is the two-day visit of Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba to Beijing to discuss China’s role in achieving peace.
Kuleba is the first senior Ukrainian official to visit China since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
China’s goal is to organize a new peace conference recognized by both sides.
Zelensky recently announced plans to hold another summit by November and invited Russian representatives to participate.
A testament to the deep divide between Hamas and Fatah, which has persisted since the PLO, where Fatah holds the majority, recognized Israel in 1993, is the fact that efforts to bring the two main Palestinian political factions closer have been ongoing for over a decade. Two significant meetings in Cairo in 2011 and Algiers in 2022 never led to tangible and definitive changes.
Therefore, the joint Beijing statement, without raising many hopes, represents another long step forward.
For two reasons, today Hamas is more urgently seeking unity than Abbas’s party. The first reason is to exit international isolation and present themselves as diplomatically active while maintaining their clear anti-Western stance. The last session was held at the end of February in Moscow and then in April in Beijing. The second reason is to ensure their role in managing the Gaza Strip and also the West Bank for the post-war period.
To convince Fatah to unite and set aside division and discord, Hamas foresees a catastrophic scenario in which, after Gaza, Israel will attack the West Bank.
From this perspective, the recent Knesset resolution rejecting the constitution of a Palestinian state certainly does not aid in uniting the two factions.