China's new foray as peace broker in the Middle East

OVER the last week, a deal brokered by China uniting the quarrelling Palestinian political parties — Fatah and Hamas, and 12 other smaller groups — threatened to grab the media spotlight away from Netanyahu's visit to Washington, D.C. Fatah leads the Palestinian Authority governing most of the West Bank while Hamas has controlled Gaza after winning an election and a short civil war with Fatah. Several attempts to reconcile the two failed owing partly to their taking opposite approaches to their relations with Israel. Fatah has recognized Israel while the Hamas platform lists the destruction of the Jewish state among its goals. Fatah has opted for diplomatic negotiations while Hamas has chosen to pursue that of armed struggle.

The disunity in Palestinian ranks has been widely seen as a factor in the lumbering progress of Palestine's transformation into a truly sovereign and independent state. They have thus fallen into Netanyahu's strategic trap. It has been bruited about that until the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023, while Netanyahu was calling them terrorists, Netanyahu was secretly supporting Hamas' control of Gaza to keep the Palestinians so divided and weak as to be unable to fight his ultra-right coalition's dream of a Greater Israel.