Chinese state media said the “Beijing Declaration” — hailed as a turning point and a sign of China’s growing role as a peace broker in far-flung conflicts — was signed by representatives of 14 Palestinian factions.
Photographs of the talks showed Mahmoud al-Aloul, deputy chairman of Fatah’s central committee, and Moussa Abu Marzouk, a senior member of Hamas, in attendance. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that the ambassadors of Egypt, Russia and Algeria also attended the meeting.
Wang called the meeting a “historic moment for the liberation of Palestine” and highlighted “consensus on the establishment of an interim government of national reconciliation to govern Gaza after the war” in a speech after the talks ended.
Wang reiterated China’s support for convening a major “international peace conference” to work toward a “comprehensive, lasting and stable ceasefire” and a two-state solution.
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At the heart of the larger debate over how to end the fierce nine-month conflict in the Gaza Strip is how the territory will be governed, either through an Israeli occupation or some form of Palestinian control. Palestinian Authority controlled by Hamas or Fatah.
The statement said a Palestinian unity government overseeing the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza would be formed, eventually holding elections, for which the leaders of the factions would meet and draw up a road map.
The joint statement may have been a clear diplomatic victory for Beijing, but analysts were immediately skeptical about the prospects for the deal, which is only the latest in a long series of similar reconciliation deals brokered — and then broken — between the two factions. The power struggle ended in 2007 when Hamas seized the Gaza Strip from Fatah authorities.
Beijing’s previous attempt at talks between Hamas and Fatah in April ended without a joint statement.
After decades of preferring to leave contentious diplomacy in the Middle East to the United States, China has in recent years been building a potential peace in some of the world’s most intractable hot spots.
“China’s Middle East policy is different from that of the West,” said Tang Zhichao, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. “There is an urgent need to reverse the international community’s lack of mediation,” Tang said, in part because of the Western world’s geopolitical marginalization on the Palestinian issue.
Beijing imposed an embargo between Iran and Saudi Arabia last year, leaving Washington in the awkward position of appreciating a major Middle East pact secured by its main geopolitical rival.
“The Middle East is not the territory of any major power,” the nationalist state-run tabloid Global Times said in an editorial published on Monday. By adopting a “unique diplomatic mediation model”, Beijing has fostered a “wave of reconciliation” in the region, it said.
China has also tried to position itself as a broker in the Russia-Ukraine war, promoting a 12-point proposal to end it.
In June, Chinese diplomats boycotted Swiss-led talks to end the war in Ukraine, saying the meeting was politically motivated and meaningless without Russia. Beijing, along with Brazil, proposed a separate agenda for a negotiated settlement instead.
Dmytro Kuleba, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Arriving in Beijing He held talks with his Chinese counterpart on Tuesday in which he hopes to win Chinese support for an end to Russian aggression.
