Fatah’s delegation is led by Azzam al-Ahmed and was on his way to China on Friday, a Fatah official confirms.
A Hamas source states that their delegation is led by Moussa Abu Marzouk, who also boarded the flight to Beijing on Friday evening.
Hamas won the elections in January 2006, the last to be held in the Palestinian territories. However, the US, EU and Israel view the group as a terrorist organization and refused to recognize the government they formed.
In February 2007, Hamas therefore invited Fatah to join a unity government, which Norway was alone in the West to recognise.
Frustration at being met with a cold shoulder, as well as the US arming the Fatah-dominated security forces, resulted a few months later in armed conflict between the two groups in the Gaza Strip.
The conflict ended with the Fatah forces being chased out of Gaza, where Hamas and its armed militia have since held power.
Unpopular president
President Mahmoud Abbas, who heads Fatah, established an interim government that has since ruled in the Palestinian-controlled parts of the occupied West Bank.
87-year-old Abbas, who has served overtime since 2009 and has little support among the Palestinians, has since refused to hold elections.
Opinion polls suggest that Hamas would once again have emerged victorious from an election.
Over the years there have been repeated rounds of talks to bring about reconciliation between the two rival parties, but these have not come to fruition.
Will crush Hamas
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made it clear that Israel’s goal is to crush Hamas once and for all after the attack they carried out on southern Israel on October 7.
Over 34,000 Palestinians have since been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza, large parts of the enclave have been bombed to rubble, and it is highly unclear who will rule there when the war is one day over.
China is now calling for reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas, and a Chinese diplomat last month held talks with the Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Qatar.
– We support the strengthening of the Palestinian Authority, and we support the efforts of all Palestinian factions to achieve reconciliation and increased solidarity through dialogue and consultations, said a spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Wang Wenbin, during a press conference on Friday.
Active role
Over the past year, China has played an increasingly active diplomatic role in the Middle East and succeeded last year in getting the two regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran to enter into a historic agreement to restore diplomatic relations.
Chinese authorities have tried to set up an international peace conference to resolve the conflict between Israel and Hamas, and Beijing is also working to give Palestine full status in the UN as a state.
China has also advocated for the UN’s highest legal body, the International Court of Justice in The Hague (ICJ), to issue a ruling on the legality of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Friday and stated after the meeting that the two discussed how China can play a constructive role in global crises, including in the Middle East.
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2024-04-27 16:41:35