Cao Xiaolin is China's current ambassador to Qatar. He says, “Palestinian unity is key to the realization of Palestinian statehood, and China is committed to facilitating it.”
With his traditional Chinese wisdom and modern Chinese mind, the young ambassador reminds us that, “The Palestinian question is at the core of the Middle East issue,” and at the heart of the Palestinian question is the political divisions among the Palestinians.
Over the past years, China has put forward proposals and taken action to address the Palestinian question. At Beijing’s invitation, senior representatives of 14 Palestinian factions engaged in dialogue in July and signed the Beijing Declaration on Ending Division and Strengthening Palestinian National Unity. The Beijing Dialogue was the most inclusive and in-depth reconciliation talks of 14 political factions to date.
Fourteen factions! The very word “faction” rings bells in my mind like a fire alarm in a dormitory. Either young kids, in panic, without knowing what to do, running around and stampeding each other; or adolescents, in panic, knowing everything to be known, running around and stampeding each other. According to the Palestinian statistics office, there were about 14 million Palestinians in the world as of mid-2024, one-half of them outside Palestine, the other half where you might say is the State of Palestine! If those factions share the people evenly, they’ll have half a million followers. Should the State of Palestine be established as it is wanted “From the River to the Sea” then there could be 14 political parties in its Parliament and the average duration of coalition governments is less than a month! How do I know? Because we had a similar situation in Türkiye for a long time.
Israelis have fewer political parties in their assembly. They have 13 political parties represented at the Knesset. Five of them joined Netanyahu’s Likud to form the coalition government; thus Netanyahu and his wife saved their necks from the jailhouse. All five parties have the word “Zionism” in their description of ideology, and all of them seek to exterminate the word “Palestine” from the dictionaries and maps. In exchange for saving himself from prison for embezzlement, Netanyahu agreed to implement their Zionist vagrancy, waiting for the first opportunity to begin the "war of all wars." You know the rest of the story: It has been 338 days since it began on Oct. 7 and still counting. I don’t think that Netanyahu is counting days and calculating how many more days he and his Zionist partners need to make Yahweh angry enough to call it a day and start doomsday!
But the point is not Netanyahu’s religion! Many people think he still believes that nature is God, not Yahweh. The point is how fast those political parties set aside their political differences. You can feel how deep those differences are if you look at Otzma Yehudit, or Jewish Power, (a leading ultra-nationalist, Kahanist and anti-Arab political party) leader Itamar Ben-Gvir’s bulging neck veins when he is shouting at the Knesset that they should nuke Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, Lebanon, Syria and all others. Yet, they can leave aside their ideologies, idiosyncrasies, and even personal hatred they have against each other.
When my generation was quite young, some of my buddies not only dreamt but actually went and joined the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) guerilla training camp in Baqa’a Valley in Jordan. (One of them, who even learned Arabic at “the Camp,” is in the Parliament in Ankara, now!) They saw “the man” (Yasser Arafat) in flesh and blood! He was not only the leader of PLO but also the embodiment of Palestinian unity. When you have a multitude of human beings, it is unavoidable that you’ll have differences of opinion. It is only human to have ideas about everything.
But the lesson is in the Knesset, which now sits on the occupied Arabian lands in Jerusalem, and in which there are 13 political parties. They all acted in unison as soon as the news of the Operation Al-Aqsa Flood reached them. It is a shame some say Israel’s war on Gaza was a response to the Hamas raid. The raid itself was a response to Israel's plans to eliminate the Palestinian cause, seize lands, Judaize the Palestinian lands and establish complete control over the Al-Aqsa Mosque and holy sites. So, the indiscriminate Israeli assault on Gaza was only the new (and according to Ben-Gvir, the final) phase of eradicating Palestine and Palestinians.
Yet, the issue is the existence of 14 factions although their existence encourages the Zionist occupation. The important consensus from the Beijing talks was reconciliation and unification among the 14 factions. At least on paper, those in the Beijing talks affirmed that the PLO is the sole legitimate representative of all Palestinian people. They agreed to establish an interim government of national reconciliation focusing on the post-conflict reconstruction of Gaza. The strongest call is for establishing an independent State of Palestine by relevant United Nations resolutions.
China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi witnessed that Mousa Abu Marzouk, head of the Hamas delegation to the Beijing talks, and Mahmoud al-Aloul, deputy chief of the Fatah movement, shook hands to keep the flame alive. The “just war” lie that Netanyahu sold at the U.S. Congress and EU meetings can only be confirmed when all Palestinians concurrently roar that there is a Palestine and Palestinians. Netanyahu cannot continue his apartheid state, nor can he continue his genocide. Only Palestinian unity could stir Muslims’ blood and start uniting to stop the bloodshed in Gaza and the West Bank.
Our brothers and sisters in Palestine should listen to Mehmet Akif Ersoy, the poet who wrote our national anthem, where he denigrates the discord, petty nationalism, sectionalism and tribalism:
“Before discord creeps into a nation, no enemy can,
No fear lurks in hearts as long as they beat as one.”
Only when you “remove the ideas of separation on your mind” can you unite 2 billion Muslims behind you. Only the Palestinian reconciliation process can to bolster confidence among their Muslim brothers and sisters.
