Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and China’s President Xi Jinping in Beijing in June 2023. (Jade Gao / Pool via AP)
Hannah H. | Red Phoenix correspondent | Texas–
On July 23, Wang Yi and the Chinese government brokered a landmark agreement between thirteen Palestinian Political and Resistance factions, including Hamas, Fatah (representing the Palestinian Liberation Organization, PLO), Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Though this agreement has not been released in full to the public, according to current leaks, it contains three main stipulations: first, that all groups recognize the PLO as the sole leader of the Palestinian resistance; second, that Fatah recognizes the right of resistance under the UN as applicable to Palestine; and third, that all groups recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine under the Oslo framework.
Already, various media outlets have begun a dog and pony show touting this as a great achievement of Chinese diplomacy. China Daily described this outcome as a hopeful day for the Middle East more broadly, namely an opportunity for the “end of conflict via peaceful development.” It should be asked if this was the same peaceful development that has made China the second-largest trade partner to Israel, the peaceful development that constructed the high-speed rail system in occupied Tel-Aviv?
Likewise, the Chinese international policy is largely one of pragmatic capitalism, where the primary goal is the creation of a system of international capital and exploitation running parallel to that of the current hegemony of the US. This includes a combination of earnest development projects in certain countries wherein China shares especial diplomatic or political interest, and traditional colonial exploitation of the rest, as in the Philippines or the Congo.
Within the Middle East, this policy has manifested within the Chinese-brokered peace agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Among many provisions for reopening diplomatic relations between the two countries, there was notably no mention of the Saudi-fueled genocide in Yemen, the mass killing of Somali refugees on the border by the Saudi government, or the deadly conditions that poorer pilgrims to Mecca experience. Rather than addressing the genuine policy disagreements between the two countries, the peace deal rather tabled the issue in favor of bringing the two countries more solidly into the BRICS economic camp. The political and structural differences between the two states were danced around, allowing China to extract profits and diplomatic control in both countries.
In 1993, there was another “peaceful” development plan for Palestine: the Oslo Accords. This was an agreement between Yasser Arafat’s Fatah and the Israeli government for Israel to end the occupation of Gaza, and to grant autonomy to the West Bank, in return for the PLO renouncing armed struggle. In effect, this only concentrated Israeli repression of the West Bank, defanged the resistance, and paved the way for the Israeli co-opting of the Fatah into a collaborationist organization used to cut the political link between the West Bank and Gaza.
The development of this agreement was similarly anything but peaceful. Notwithstanding the ongoing genocide in Gaza perpetuated by the Israeli government and the American ruling class, this agreement was only made possible by the almost incomprehensible decision of the fascist Netanyahu government to annex the West Bank into Israel proper. This dislodged the political opportunists in control of the Palestinian Authority under Abbas, effectively forcing Fatah’s hand.
The J23 agreement, after the prior annexation of the West Bank, serves as the final nail in the coffin for the Oslo framework. A set of treaties originally described by Francis Sejersted as a “return from the vicious cycle of violence into a track towards peaceful coexistence” — while granting Abbas, head of Fatah, and Rabin, Prime Minister of Israel, a Nobel Peace Prize. An agreement that granted Israel control over the drinking water, borders, and politics of Palestine was always a transparent attempt to whitewash the expansionist project into a mere set of assets to be divided up between interest groups. Oslo brought no justice, and without justice, there isn’t peace. Further, there was no reality in which any Israeli government would accept a treaty that jeopardized their oppression of the Palestinian people and domination over their nation.
While not going so far as to legitimize Israeli occupation, the J23 agreement does extremely little for the desolate and starving people of Gaza, or the oppressed and divided people of the West Bank. It was a culmination of events set into motion by the fascist government of Israel breaking one final treaty, that secured their position of ruling over the West Bank, in preparation for something worse.
Likewise, the current treaty is unlikely to shift the West Bank Fatah towards any form of resistance, nor facilitate much of anything beyond a memorandum of understanding between quislings and their enemies, and a closer relationship between China and Iran.
The resistance will continue fighting on the ground, as they did yesterday, and the Palestinian Authority will continue to collaborate with the Zionist oppressors under one flag or another. The Oslo Accords are dead, as they have never lived.
In the meantime, we must all join forces with the progressives and anti-imperialists in our country and around the world, in every encampment, at every protest, and in every workplace. The American Party of Labor stands with the oppressed masses for a united, democratic state of Palestine! Victory to the resistance, victory to Palestine!