The so-called unity deal signed in Beijing this week by 14 Palestinian factions, including Hamas and Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah, should be viewed as nothing but a sham and an effort by China to elbow its way into the Middle East, experts told JNS.
The “Beijing declaration” sets the stage for an “interim national reconciliation government” to govern a post-war Gaza, as announced by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who hosted the event.
Former Israeli National Security Adviser Meir Ben-Shabbat told JNS he advises against placing significant importance on this move.
“Both Fatah and Hamas made an effort to present China in a positive light,” he said, adding that according to the information released to the media, “the agreement is full of holes” and “will end like its predecessors.”
Other rounds of talks—all of which failed—were held in Russia, Egypt, Turkey and Algeria.
In any case, said Ben-Shabbat, Israel’s stance on such ideas and agreements “should be firm and clear: Hamas is a monstrous terrorist organization and Israel will continue to pursue Hamas terrorists in every setting and in every guise in which its forces appear.”
According to award-winning Arab and Palestinian affairs journalist Khaled Abu Toameh, “contrary to what has been reported by some media outlets, there is no signed agreement between Fatah and Hamas.”
The Beijing meeting was simply “another meeting of several Palestinian factions, including Fatah and Hamas, to talk about ‘national unity,’” he said.
“We have seen similar statements by the same 14 factions in the past,” he noted. “This, in addition to the previous six reconciliation agreements signed between Fatah and Hamas over the past 18 years, none of which materialized.”
In April, Fatah and Hamas held negotiations in the Chinese capital with a view to forging a Palestinian unity government.
In February, Fatah and Hamas officials converged on Moscow for a two-day “national dialogue” on forming a unity government under the auspices of the Russian Foreign Ministry.
“At the end of the day, all these declarations and agreements have not brought about any changes on the ground,” said Abu-Toameh.
This, he explained, is because the gap between Fatah and Hamas “remains as wide as ever.”
“The two sides continue to publicly criticize each other,” he noted.
‘Improve its poor public image’
Michael Milstein, head of the Palestinian Studies Forum at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University, agreed with Ben-Shabbat and Abu-Toameh, saying both Hamas and Fatah “are not serious at all.”
Both factions may have engaged in negotiations, but each was inflexible and they have no plan for “concrete progress,” he said.
According to Milstein, the P.A. “needs the negotiations in order to improve its poor public image” while Hamas “needs to demonstrate relevance in the “day-after” discussion.
But China’s attempt to play power broker is unlikely to succeed, he said, as “no one in the Palestinian arena gives any chance for real change.”
Still, according to Milstein the most important and interesting issue in this latest round of reconciliation dialogue is the “unprecedented involvement” of Beijing.
According to Abu-Toameh, “Some Palestinians see China’s recurring invitations to the faction leaders as a statement that it seeks a bigger role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
This is something the Palestinian factions have long been encouraging, he said, in view of their perception of U.S. bias toward Israel.
In Milstein’s assessment, this was an attempt by the Chinese “to take advantage of what they consider to be American weakness in the Middle East,” noting Beijing’s success in brokering talks between Iran and Saudi Arabia last year.
He believes the event in Beijing “has particularly symbolic importance and the Chinese themselves know it won’t lead anywhere.”
Yet “from their point of view, it’s the first step in a new field they had never been in,” he said. The Chinese are under no illusions that the talks are going to go anywhere, he said.
For almost two decades, multiple reconciliation efforts between Fatah and Hamas have ended in total failure, something of which Beijing is well aware, he said.
“Many believe the only change that can happen is cosmetic or symbolic but not something dramatic like the deployment of the P.A. in Gaza and taking control over the area, or the gradual involvement of Hamas in West Bank government bureaucracy.”
Not even the Palestinians believe this time things will be different, he said.
