Hamas and Fatah sign agreement in Beijing ‘ending’ their division, China says

Hong Kong
CNN
 — 

Palestinian factions including rivals Hamas and Fatah have signed an agreement on “ending division and strengthening Palestinian unity” in Beijing, China said Tuesday.

The announcement followed reconciliation talks hosted by China involving 14 Palestinian factions starting Sunday, according to China’s Foreign Ministry, which come as Israel wages war against militant group Hamas in Gaza and as Beijing has sought to present itself as a potential peace broker in the conflict.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said the agreement was “dedicated to the great reconciliation and unity of all 14 factions.”

“The core outcome is that the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) is the sole legitimate representative of all Palestinian people,” Wang said, adding that “an agreement has been reached on post-Gaza war governance and the establishment of a provisional national reconciliation government.”

It was unclear from Wang’s comments what role Hamas, which is not part of the PLO, would play in such an arrangement, or what the immediate impact of any deal would be. The talks were held as the future governance of Palestinian territories remains in question following the Israel’s repeated vow to eradicate Hamas in response to the group’s October 7 terrorist attack on its territory.

The PLO is a coalition of parties that signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1993, and formed a new government in the Palestinian Authority (PA).

Fatah dominates both the PLO and the PA, the interim Palestinian government that was established in the Israeli-occupied West Bank after the 1993 agreement known as the Oslo Accords was signed. Hamas was not party to the accords and does not recognize Israel.

Mustafa Barghouti, president of the Palestinian National Initiative, who was at the Beijing talks, said “all the parties” have agreed that they should join the PLO, and that the organization is the only legitimate representative of the Palestinians.

There is a long history of bitter enmity between Hamas and Fatah. The two sides have tried – and failed – multiple times to reach an agreement to unite the two separate Palestinian territories under one governance structure, with a 2017 agreement quickly folding in violence.

The PA held administrative control over Gaza until 2007, after Hamas won the 2006 legislative elections in the occupied territories and expelled it from the strip. Since then, Hamas has ruled Gaza and the PA governs parts of the West Bank.

Hamas and Fatah signed a reconciliation agreement in Cairo in October 2017 under pressure from the Arab states, led by Egypt. Under the deal, a new unity government was supposed to take administrative control of Gaza two months later, ending a decade of rivalry that began when Hamas violently evicted the Palestinian Authority from Gaza in 2007.

But the deal’s lofty aspirations quickly collapsed. When Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah visited Gaza in March 2018, he was the target of an assassination attempt when a bomb detonated near his convoy. Hamdallah’s Fatah party immediately blamed Hamas for the attack.

Barghouti said the latest attempt at reconciling the Palestinian factions “went much further” than previous efforts and included “specific steps” towards the formation of a consensus government.

The war in Gaza, he told CNN, has prodded the factions to unite as a common front against Israel’s occupation.

“There was a very clear feeling that what Israel is doing is really threatening everybody,” he said. “And so, in that sense, the feeling of unity (to) confront the Israeli side is very clear here.”

A new government would ensure the unity of the occupied West Bank and Gaza, ruling both territories after the war and effectively “blocking Israeli efforts” to maintain its occupation of Gaza, he said.

Most Palestinians would however be taking the news about reconciliation “with the usual caution and pessimism,” said Tahani Mustafa, senior Palestine analyst at the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank.

“The major issues that have proven to be obstacles to reconciliation in the past were not addressed,” she told CNN. “It’s very unlikely anything substantial will come out of this especially as the biggest obstacle so far has been (Palestinian Authority president and Fatah leader) Mahmoud Abbas (and) his absolute reluctance to relinquish in any way his monopoly on power.”

Hamas is not opposed to the PLO but has instead demanded fair representation within the organization, she said. “Abbas has been reluctant to provide this, as it would mean Fatah losing its hegemony over the last Palestinian political institution it controls.”

At a news conference Tuesday in Beijing, Hamas delegation representative Mousa Abu Marzook said they had reached an agreement to complete a “course of reconciliation,” while also using the platform in Beijing to defend the group’s October 7 attack on Israel.

“We’re at a historic junction. Our people are rising up in their efforts to struggle,” Abu Marzook said, according to a translation provided by China’s Foreign Ministry, adding that the October 7 operation had “changed a lot, both in international and regional landscape.”

Beijing has not explicitly condemned Hamas for its October 7 attack on Israel.

Tuesday’s agreement follows an earlier round of talks between Hamas and Fatah hosted by Beijing in April.

Since the start of the war in Gaza, China – which has looked to bolster its influence and ties in the Middle East in recent years – has presented itself as a leading voice for countries across the Global South decrying Israel’s war in the enclave and calling for Palestinian statehood.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping in May called for an international peace conference during meetings with leaders from Arab nations and has also dispatched a special envoy to the Middle East to meet with diplomats and officials.

Observers have questioned the extent of Beijing’s geopolitical clout in a region where the US has long been a dominant power, but China surprised many last March when it played a role brokering a rapprochement between longtime rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Those efforts have been broadly seen as part of Beijing’s push to position itself as a geopolitical heavyweight with a different vision for the world from the United States.

Tuesday’s agreement was also inked as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in the US for a highly anticipated visit in which he will meet top US officials and address Congress.

Israel launched its military operations in Gaza following Hamas’ October 7 attack that killed more than 1,100 people and saw roughly 250 others kidnapped. Around 39,000 Palestinians have died in the conflict, which that has triggered a mass humanitarian crisis and widespread destruction.