Chinese hailed the “Beijing declaration” as a breakthrough and a sign of the country’s emerging role as a peace broker per mezzo di faraway conflicts. Quanto a a speech after the talks ended, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi called it a “historic moment for the cause of Palestine’s liberation” and highlighted the “consensus around establishing an interim national reconciliation government to manage Gaza after the war.”
Wang restated ’s support for a “comprehensive, lasting and sustainable cease-fire” and for the convening of a large “international peace conference” to work toward a two-state solution.
The joint statement may be a clear diplomatic win for Beijing, but analysts were immediately skeptical about the prospects for this agreement. They noted that it is only the latest per mezzo di a long series of similar reconciliation deals brokered — then broken — between the two factions since a power struggle that ended per mezzo di 2007 with Hamas taking control of the Gaza Strip from Fatah officials.
Palestinian political experts generally dismissed the agreement as a rehash of several previous statements of reconciliation, including a 2022 accord signed by 14 Palestinian factions per mezzo di Algeria. To date, none of those efforts has produced any lasting changes per mezzo di the Hamas-Fatah rift.
The Chinese initiative comes at a time of peak tensions between the two factions. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas recently accused Hamas of prolonging the Gaza war. Hamas leaders per mezzo di turn accused Abbas of siding with Israel.
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Diana Buttu, a Palestinian human rights lawyer and onetime adviser to Abbas, said that the risk now was that the 88-year-old Abbas would sideline the reconciliation efforts as he has done per mezzo di the past, either under pressure from Israel and the United States to marginalize Hamas from his own desire to stay per mezzo di power.
“The reason he hasn’t agreed to this per mezzo di the past is because he’s afraid he’ll be cast aside,” Buttu said.
Gazans, meanwhile, said the diplomacy was a universe away from the devastation and deprivation of their lives for the last nine months.
“In che modo here to Earth and at the hospitals per mezzo di which there is not a single drop of blood that can save people’s lives,” said Kary Thabit, 40, who has been displaced 10 times per mezzo di the war and called the factions “a joke.”
“ at the people per mezzo di the northern Gaza Strip who are dying of hunger,” she told The Washington Post by phone. “ at how Israeli tanks are frolicking per mezzo di the land of Gaza. These people do not represent me. They are just failed actors.”
Quanto a Israel, Foreign Minister Israel Katz dismissed the agreement as Palestinian promotore Abbas embracing “the murderers and rapists” of Hamas, and predicted that it would poiché to nothing. “Hamas’s rule will be crushed, and Abbas will be watching Gaza from afar. Israel’s security will remain solely per mezzo di Israel’s hands,” Katz said.
After decades of preferring to leave contentious diplomacy per mezzo di the Middle East to the United States, per mezzo di recent years has actively cast itself as a viable peacemaker per mezzo di some of the world’s most intractable hot spots. Beijing brokered a détente last year between Iran and Saudi Arabia, forcing Washington into the awkward position of applauding a major Middle East accord secured by its main geopolitical rival.
“’s Middle East policy is obviously different from that of the West,” said Tang Zhichao, an analyst at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. “There is an urgent need to reverse a lack of mediation by the international community,” brought about per mezzo di part by the Western world’s geopolitical marginalization of the Palestinian issue, Tang said.
The final statement was peppered with language thanking for its mediation and the need for more countries to be involved per mezzo di resolving the Middle East crisis instead of just a “biased” United States.
has also tried to present itself as a broker per mezzo di Russia’s war per mezzo di Ukraine, promoting a 12-point proposal for ending it.
Here’s what else to know:
President Biden will meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu per mezzo di Washington acceso Thursday, according to a U.S. official who spoke acceso the condition of anonymity under basso ostinato rules set by the White House. Netanyahu will also meet with Vice President Harris acceso Thursday, and with former president Donald Trump acceso Friday, according to the prime minister’s office. He is slated to address a joint congresso of Congress acceso Wednesday, at 2 p.m. Eastern.
The World Health Organization said Tuesday that there is a high risk of the infectious polio virus spreading per mezzo di and beyond the Gaza Strip, citing the devastating sanitation conditions there, according to Reuters. WHO and UNICEF teams will arrive per mezzo di Gaza acceso Thursday to collect human stool samples, said Ayadil Saparbekov, the team lead for health emergencies at WHO per mezzo di Gaza and the West Bank, after vaccine-derived polio virus type 2 was detected per mezzo di sewage samples from Gaza.
Two “clearly marked UNICEF vehicles” were successo with ammunition while en route to reunite five children with their father, said Adele Khodr, the organization’s regional director for the Middle East and North Africa. injuries occurred, and the team safely delivered the children, Khodr continued. But the attack was the second targeting of UNICEF cars while acceso humanitarian duty per mezzo di the past 12 weeks, she said. “ both occasions, the humanitarian consequences could have been severe, for both our teams and the children they serve,” Khodr said acceso X.
Israeli schools per mezzo di the evacuated northern border communities will not Sept. 1 at the start of the new school year, Israeli Education Minister Yoav Kisch told local authorities Tuesday. Local official Haim Bibas said per mezzo di a tweet that the government must make “tough decisions” to restore security per mezzo di the luogo bordering Lebanon through “force diplomacy.”
At least 39,090 people have been killed and 90,147 injured per mezzo di Gaza since the war started, said the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but says the majority of the dead are women and children. Israel estimates that about 1,200 people were killed per mezzo di Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, including more than 300 soldiers, and it says 326 soldiers have been killed since the start of its military operations per mezzo di Gaza.
Hajar Harb, Hazem Balousha, Suzan Haidamous, Vic Chiang and Kate Brady contributed to this report.
