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Opinion
Kudos to China for helping open the door to Palestinian unity
- The Beijing Declaration reflects China’s aim to project itself as a credible power and peace enabler in West Asia
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Commodore C. Uday Bhaskar is director of the Society for Policy Studies (SPS), an independent think tank based in New Delhi.
China enabled a potentially major diplomatic breakthrough in the historically tangled and now bloodied Palestinian issue on Tuesday with the consensus reached in the Beijing Declaration. The agreement lays the foundation for reconciliation among 14 rival Palestinian factions. The fact that China brought together the two most dominant groups and bitter rivals – Fatah and Hamas – to the same table is a feather in the cap for Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
One uses the word “potentially”, for West Asian politics and the deeply embedded hostilities and discord that criss-cross the region are a minefield for peacemakers and conflict resolution professionals. Palestine is arguably by far the most difficult and intractable issue in the regional framework.
The core of the Beijing Declaration is a reiteration by all the Palestinian factions to realise national unity under an umbrella, wherein the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) would be acknowledged as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. This decision among the factions is an acknowledgement of the PLO’s primacy in Palestinian politics, and a signal to Hamas.
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