BEIJING: China said on Tuesday that rival Palestinian groups 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,” foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said, referring to the groups 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 sides had met.

Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip in 2007 after ferocious fighting with its rivals in Fatah, which maintains partial administrative control in the Israeli-occupied West Bank through the Palestinian Authority.

Beijing has been calling for an immediate ceasefire since the start of the current crisis in October last year. Beijing said on Tuesday the two factions had “agreed to continue this process of dialogue with a view to achieving Palestinian unity at an early date”.

“The two sides highly appreciated China’s firm support for the just cause of the Palestinian people to restore their legitimate national rights,” Lin said.

He did not identify the representatives from Hamas and Fatah who met in Beijing. But one analyst said that, in contrast to Western efforts to sideline the group, Beijing’s “strategic objective is to legitimise Hamas as a political faction”.

“Palestinian unity, in Beijing’s view, is the first and necessary step for a peace process that leads to a Palestinian state,” Ahmed Aboudouh, an Associate Fellow at Chatham House’s Middle East and North Africa Programme, said.

“Most importantly, China wants to keep the momentum of positive discourse about its role in the Middle East,” he added.

“This means presenting itself as a credible mediator and a superpower that does things differently.” China has historically been sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and supportive of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has called for an “international peace conference” to resolve the fighting.

In November, Beijing hosted a delegation of diplomats from Arab and Muslim-majority nations, in which Foreign Minister Wang Yi warned a “humanitarian disaster” was unfolding in Gaza.

The United States welcomes any Chinese efforts that lead to stability and security in the region or secure the deal to free hostages, White House national security spokesman John Kirby said.

Published in Dawn, May 1st, 2024