With Washington foreign policy in flux, Communist China is attempting to muscle in on regions where America was once dominant, including the Mideast. On Monday it orchestrated a new pact legitimizing the Hamas terrorists. 

Palestinian factions traveled to Beijing for three days of talks that were concluded Monday when they signed a document of intent to create a “unity government” and conduct a future election. Among the included 14 factions are the America-backed Fatah party that dominates the Palestinian Authority and its rival, Hamas. 

“The U.S. is retreating from the Middle East, so it gives the Chinese an opportunity to get into the region,” a congressional staffer tells the Sun. For Beijing, the pact has “more propaganda value than geostrategic substance,” the staffer adds. 

“Reconciliation is an internal matter for the Palestinian factions but at the same time it cannot be achieved without the support of the international community,” Beijing’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, said Monday. “When some other countries add oil to the fire, we try our best to bring peace,” a foreign ministry spokesman, Bi Haibo, added. 

There seems to be much less than meets the eye in the Beijing pact. “Many similar agreements were signed between Fatah and Hamas since 2011, and not one line in them was implemented,” a veteran Arab world watcher in Israel, Ehud Ya’ari, told Channel 12 television. In the three days of negotiations, he added, talks ended in screams and door-slamming “but no one wanted to insult the Chinese,” so the factions signed a meaningless piece of paper.

Rather than achieving the ever-elusive unity among rival Palestinian factions, the Monday signing seems mostly about Communist China’s global competition with America, including in the Mideast.

Last year Beijing chaperoned the renewal of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran. As in the Palestinian case, the pact is yet to end the enmity between the two regional rivals, and was mostly designed to raise Chairman Xi’s diplomatic profile. 

The Chinese Communists have always argued that unity among Palestinian factions is a crucial step for statehood. Now they’re “going to blow this agreement out of proportion,” a China watcher at the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies, Tuvia Gering, tells the Sun. 

In state-owned media, he adds, Beijing is displaying split-screen graphics, with “America-supported Israeli war scenes on one side, and pro-peace China, with images of today’s agreement, on the other.” They also “claim success where many before them have failed, which raises their image as a top world player.”

Communist China is appealing to the so-called Global South, presenting itself as an alternative to America. It is “hoping to gain support in the Arab and Muslim world,” Mr. Gering says. While America is accusing China of committing genocide against Uyghur Muslims at Xinjiang province, he adds, Beijing is now “accusing America of committing genocide, through Israel, of Muslims in Gaza.”

If and when Communist China invades Taiwan, Mr. Xi expects full support from Arab and Muslim countries in return for Beijing’s support for Gaza, Mr. Gering says: “It’s like, ‘‏I support your core interests, so you must support mine.’” 

America meanwhile is struggling to cut a deal to end the Gaza war and release hostages. In an upcoming meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu, the presumed Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Harris, is expected to try her hand in handling complex Mideast diplomacy. 

Ms. Harris will tell the Israeli premier that “it is time for the war to end in a way that Israel is secure, all the hostages are released, the suffering of Palestinian civilians in Gaza ends, and the Palestinians enjoy their right to dignity, freedom, and self determination,” an unidentified aide to the vice president told the Wall Street Journal. 

Beyond such generalities, President Biden is hoping to end his term with a Gaza breakthrough. His Mideast adviser, Brent McGurk, has met secretly at Abu Dhabi recently with a top Netanyahu aide, Ron Dermer, and the United Arab Emirates’s foreign minister, Abdullah Bin Zayed, Axios reports.

The three discussed plans for post-war Gaza, including an idea for a multi-national force. The UAE’s ambassador at the United Nations, Lana Nusseibeh, said that Emirati troops could join such a force. In a Financial Times op-ed, Ms. Nusseibeh wrote that one condition for dispatching the force is that it would officially be invited by the Palestinian Authority. 

America is the Palestinian Authority’s top financial supporter. It also lists Hamas as a terrorist organization. Following the October 7 massacre, Mr. Biden said the group must be “eliminated.” Although the Beijing-sponsored Hamas-Fatah pact is unlikely to be implemented, the mere fact of it being signed could pose problems for Washington’s efforts to end the Gaza war.