China will once again host Hamas and Fatah officials

According to reports, China will host senior officials of two Palestinian factions, Hamas and Fatah, for a meeting next week.

Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas’s political bureau, arrives in China with a delegation from the movement. The Fatah delegation will include three high-ranking representatives of the movement, including the vice president.

Citing unnamed officials in both parties, the New York Times reported that the meeting between Hamas and Fatah is part of Beijing’s effort to bridge differences between the groups that have been competing for power in Gaza and the occupied West Bank for decades. .

Beijing hosted the first round of talks to reach a potential compromise at the end of April, and Chinese President Xi Jinping has previously called for a peace summit to end the war in Gaza.

After the meeting that the two Palestinian currents had in China in April, Beijing announced that the Fatah movement led by Mahmoud Abbas and the Hamas movement expressed their willingness to compromise in the unity talks in China. 

Fatah and Hamas blamed each other for the postponement of the China meeting. Bassem Naim, a senior Hamas official who attended the April meeting, told Reuters news agency that the Fatah movement demanded the postponement of the meeting without specifying a time limit. 

The spokesman of the Fatah movement also announced that our movement had not rejected the invitation for a meeting between the officials of the two sides, but had discussed with the Chinese ambassador about the proposed date due to the escalation of Israeli aggression and the complexity of the events. Subsequently, an alternative date was proposed for this meeting, which Hamas refused to participate in. 

Translator: Azam Purkand