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

By Simone McCarthy, Isaac Yee and Abeer Salman, CNN

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 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.

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. Fatah immediately blamed Hamas for the attack.

A common front against occupation

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.

Israel launched its military operations in Gaza following the Hamas 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.

“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.”

Hossam Badran, a member of Hamas’ Political Bureau, said that during the meeting a step toward forming a consensus government was agreed in principle, “with the approval of the Palestinian factions, to manage the affairs of the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, supervise reconstruction, and also prepare the atmosphere for elections at a later stage.”

Badran said this initiative should not wait until after the war, but should proceed even as the conflict continues and that establishing such a government could facilitate a ceasefire.

He added that in “this meeting, we talked about the mechanisms, but a one- or two-day meeting does not allow us to discuss all the details.”

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

China’s role

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.

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

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.

China is promoting an idea that it is “doing the impossible – bringing these oppositional sides together,” said Jonathan Fulton, a nonresident senior fellow for the Atlantic Council’s Middle East programs.

“It fits (their) narrative that the US is the wedge issue, that Western involvement in the Middle East created these divisions and China can come in and ease them … but I don’t know that China really is seen (in the region) as a credible actor who can do much,” he said, pointing to Beijing’s relatively limited regional expertise and influence to ensure the success of the agreements or solutions it supports.

The US State Department said that while it had not reviewed the text of the Beijing agreement, it did not support Hamas having a role in the postwar governance of Gaza.

“When it comes to governance of Gaza at the end of the conflict, there can’t be a role for a terrorist organization,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told a press briefing, referring to Hamas specifically.

Miller said he did not believe the deal would “in any way have an impact on the ongoing discussions to reach a ceasefire” and that the US wants to see the Palestinian Authority governing “a unified Gaza and the West Bank” after the war.

“But no, we do not support a role for Hamas,” said Miller, adding that Hamas has “the blood of innocent civilians, both Israeli and Palestinian, on their hands.”

Miller would not say whether US Secretary of State Antony Blinken would speak about the deal specifically in his upcoming meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

Tuesday’s agreement was 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.

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CNN’s Abbas Al Lawati contributed to this report.