China’s Mideast peacemaker drive signals ‘major’ post-war ambitions in the region: analysts

A meeting in Beijing last week between the two rival Palestinian factions for talks on ending internal division is being viewed by analysts as part of a wider strategy by China to map out a larger role in the Middle East. Diplomatic observers see the talks between Hamas and Fatah as part of China’s continued push to play peacemaker in the region while challenging the Western-led international order. And if successful, Beijing could play a “major” post-war role in the region, they said. China’s foreign ministry on Tuesday confirmed that representatives from the two groups had held “in-depth and candid” meetings to “promote Palestinian reconciliation”, adding that the talks yielded “encouraging progress”. “They agreed to continue this dialogue process so as to achieve Palestinian solidarity and unity soon,” ministry spokesman Lin Jian said. Lin said the meeting came at the invitation of the Chinese government. Fatah runs the Palestinian Authority, the Western-backed government body that partially controls the Israel-occupied West Bank. Hamas, which overturned the Palestinian Authority’s rule in Gaza in 2007, controls the Gaza Strip. The talks came as the conflict in the Middle East stretches into its seventh month, with little sign of easing as Israel pushes for a ground operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah. China had earlier said it was willing to mediate the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict. However, since the war erupted last year, it has not condemned Hamas for its October 7 attack on Israel, despite pressure from the West. Jean-Loup Samaan, a senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute, said it was too early to determine if the Hamas-Fatah talks could elevate China’s role as a peacemaker in the Middle East, a position that Beijing has sought to fill. “But it shows that Beijing is trying to follow a pattern that is somewhat similar to the one that led to the Saudi-Iran deal it brokered last year,” he said. “This is a modest step but one that tells us China is not without ambitions in the Middle East.” Last year, China scored an unexpected diplomatic victory when it brokered a deal between Gulf rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia, with indications that it planned to play a bigger role as a mediator in the Middle East. Following the deal, then foreign minister Qin Gang made separate phone calls to his Israeli and Palestinian counterparts to say China was ready to facilitate peace talks. David Arase, resident professor of international politics with the Hopkins-Nanjing Centre, said that by hosting last week’s talks, China “wants to get into the limelight”. “China wants to … affect the outcome of current moves by the US and its Arab allies to force Israel toward a ceasefire agreement and concrete plans for Gaza’s rehabilitation and governance thereafter,” he said. Beijing has on multiple occasions criticised Washington’s actions in the unfolding war, including the use of its veto powers to block UN Security Council resolutions that called for an immediate ceasefire. “With intransigence based on its own interests and geopolitical calculations, the United States has repeatedly resorted to veto in an abusive manner, which is not commensurate with the role of a responsible power,” Fu Cong, China’s envoy to the United Nations, told a meeting of the world body on Wednesday. “We hope that the United States will truly uphold an objective and impartial position and join the international community’s action for justice, to play a constructive role in stopping the war and alleviating the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.” Arase said the Hamas-Fatah talks were part of “intensifying efforts” by China, Russia, North Korea and Iran to “break apart the Western-led rules-based order that seeks to contain their respective expansionist or revanchist agendas”. The party ruling Gaza after the war would determine whether a genuine peace process would restart and whether Israel would be strengthened or weakened as a key US ally in the Middle East, he said. “By inserting Hamas as a spoiler in the peace process, Iran, Russia and China can divert the US from conflicts in Europe and the Indo-Pacific, and weaken the ability of the US, Israel and the US’ Arab allies to stabilise the Middle East,” Arase added. A similar round of talks between Hamas and Fatah was held in Russia in February, where the two parties were urged to unite before they could negotiate with Israel. Hongda Fan, a professor at the Middle East Studies Institute at Shanghai International Studies University, said it was “better to have such exchanges … than not”, given that Palestine “urgently needed internal unity”. For China, “doing something conducive to peace is always a good thing, and it is always more meaningful than providing weapons to warring parties”, Fan said. “Although this is not an ideal moment to promote reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah, China’s peace efforts do exist.” Fan, however, did not think that China could play a major role in the conflict because it would be difficult for Israel to rebuild its trust in Beijing in the short-term. “But for the Middle East, which longs for peace and development, China obviously cannot be ignored. I believe that China will not stay away from the peace efforts in the Middle East,” he said. China’s response to the war thus far – including its meetings with Hamas officials – has been viewed by analysts as an unbalanced position that has frustrated Israel. Fan said last week’s talks were also “not meaningful” as the fate of Hamas remained uncertain and Fatah could not effectively cooperate with Hamas under current circumstances. Samaan added that key issues still stood in the way of internal reconciliation, including the types of power-sharing arrangements the two rival groups were willing to accept and if Hamas officials could truly speak on behalf of the people of Gaza. Still, the talks could lead to a “potentially major achievement” for China in the context of the post-war reconstruction of Gaza. “In that sense, it could enable China to play a major role after months of war that saw Beijing distancing itself from the logic of conflict in the Middle East,” Samaan said. “Having said that, there are many factors internal to Palestinian politics that China does not control … so we need to remain cautious on what to expect from this latest initiative.”