China: Hamas, Fatah showed ‘political will’ for reconciliation in recent Beijing talks
Chinese Foreign Ministry says rival Palestinian groups made ‘positive progress,’ agreed on further talks to ‘achieve the realization of Palestinian solidarity and unity’
China said Tuesday that representatives from Hamas and Fatah met in Beijing recently for “in-depth and candid talks on promoting intra-Palestinian reconciliation.”
“Representatives of the Palestine National Liberation Movement and the Islamic Resistance Movement recently came to Beijing,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said, referring to the rival Palestinian factions by their formal names.
“The two sides fully expressed their political will to achieve reconciliation through dialogue and consultation, discussed many specific issues and made positive progress,” he added, without specifying when the representatives had met.
“They agreed to continue the course of talks to achieve the realization of Palestinian solidarity and unity at an early date,” he said, noting that both sides had thanked Beijing for its efforts to “promote Palestinian internal unity and reached an agreement on further dialogue.”
Terror group Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip from Fatah, which administers the West Bank, in a 2007 coup. International efforts since then have so far failed to reconcile the two factions.
In March, Russia hosted the two groups, along with other Palestinian factions, to discuss the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, and governance plans for an eventual postwar period.
Also in March, Russia and China both exercised their veto power in the United Nations Security Council to block a US-backed resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza as part of a hostage deal.
Beijing said that the draft “dodged the most central issue, that of a ceasefire” through its “ambiguous” language, while Moscow claimed that the “exceedingly politicized” resolution contained an effective green light for Israel to mount a military operation in Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah, where more than half of the Strip’s 2.3 million residents have been sheltering amid the ongoing war.
China has historically been sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and supportive of a two-state solution.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has called for an “international peace conference” to resolve the fighting, and Beijing has been calling for an immediate ceasefire since war erupted in Gaza after Hamas’s October 7 massacre, which saw terrorists burst across the border into Israel, killing some 1,200 people and seizing 253 hostages.
Vowing to destroy Hamas and return the hostages, Israel launched a wide-scale offensive in Gaza which Hamas-run health authorities say has killed at least 34,450 people in the Gaza Strip.
These figures cannot be independently verified, and are believed to include both civilians and Hamas members killed in Gaza, including as a consequence of terror groups’ own rocket misfires.
