China's Middle East peace drive faces 'big challenges' after brokering Palestinian deal
China's success in bringing together rival Palestinian factions is only a first step, according to diplomatic observers who warned it faces a bigger challenge in making the deal stick and getting Israel on board.
"The declaration is a great breakthrough, but it will not be easy to advance it," said Ma Xiaolin, an international relations specialist at Zhejiang International Studies University.
"The first step is to push for a ceasefire, but Israel has not changed its position on Hamas and has rejected Hamas involvement in the post-war governance of Gaza, and this will be the biggest challenge," he said. "Maybe the next step for China is to send a special envoy to persuade Israel."
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Beijing has not released the full details of the deal between Fatah, Hamas and 12 smaller Palestinian factions. But the outlines of the agreement would see a Palestinian unity government being formed to oversee Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem with elections to be held as soon as possible.
Although this implies acceptance of a two-state solution, both the United States and Israel have rejected any role for Hamas.
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz posted on X, formerly Twitter, "this won't happen because Hamas's rule will be crushed".
In Washington, State Department spokesman Mathew Miller said the Palestinian Authority should be the one "governing a unified Gaza and West Bank".
The US is continuing to push for a ceasefire agreement that would see Hamas freeing all remaining hostages seized last October, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expected to visit the White House on Thursday.
The deal signed in Beijing is the latest attempt to bring rival Palestinian factions together, but none have been able to stick.
A 2017 reconciliation deal signed by Hamas and Fatah in Cairo in 2017 under pressure from Arab states would have led to the creation of a unity government in Gaza, but it collapsed over a disagreement about who would control the borders.
To make matters worse, the following year the then Palestinian Authority prime minister Rami Hamdallah blamed Hamas for an assassination attempt against him during a visit to Gaza.
News portal Middle East Monitor reported that the Beijing agreement incorporated other previous deals, including the 2011 National Accord Agreement signed in Cairo and the 2022 Algeria Declaration, to be implemented "with the help of Egypt, Algeria, China and Russia".
Ma said previous failures were largely due to underrepresentation and the lack of a monitoring system to oversee implementation.
"Only countries such as China and Russia can take care of the Palestinian cause in the framework of the United Nations and counteract the unfair US position against Palestine," he added.
China has been trying to promote its image as a peace broker after negotiating a deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia to restore diplomatic relations last year.
But Clemens Chay, a research fellow at the National University of Singapore's Middle East Institute, said that while the Iranians and Saudis had both given clear signals they were willing to engage with each other, "there are inherent differences, which are difficult to overcome" among the rival Palestinian factions.
These include disagreements over whether to commit to non-violent means of securing statehood and how a post-war Palestinian state would be governed.
"I would say that Beijing managed to achieve a kind of lowest denominator from all factors and perhaps also dangling some carrots," Chay said.
"In other words, some concessions for the parties involved. It's more symbolic than substantial."
Looking forward, Chay said it would take a great deal of political capital on Beijing's part to hold the Palestinian factions to their word - and there was still the additional hurdle of getting Israel to stop fighting and accept whatever national unity government was formed.
This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2024 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
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