After Hamas’s Al-Aqsa Flood operation, Israeli military bombed and then advanced into the Gaza Strip creating starvation, destruction and genocide. This crisis prompted the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah and the Hamas leadership to try to reach a new agreement on unity government with the goal of reaching a common plan of action for the eventual reconstruction of the Gaza Strip. Palestinians worldwide and at home had been calling for unity for a number of years, since, at least, the second intifada and since Hamas won the 2006 PA elections against Fatah.
This plan was cemented by the ‘Beijing declaration‘ which led to premature claims that “fourteen factions endorsed the Palestinian Authority as the interim government of Gaza and the West Bank and that Hamas would step down. Previously rejected two-state solution was to be the international model for statehood.
Despite UN confirmation, there is no state of Palestine despite the chairman of the PLO, Yassir Arafat, declaring a independent state of Palestine on 15 November 1988. In the recent Trump ultimatums to Hamas (the ‘20 point plan‘), there is no offer to the Palestinian Authority of statehood or even that it could form an interim government of Gaza and the West Bank.
This week, in exchange for another ceasefire previously and repeatedly broken by a israel, Hamas has agreed to release Israeli soldiers held captive since year it’s Al-Aqsa Flood operation in 2023.
In a recent study by Al-Shabaka*, a network of Palestinian intellectuals, practitioners, and activists based in Palestine and around the globe, China stands accused of complicity in the US backed genocide by Israel.
For those with facile demands that solidarity groups accept any proposal without critical analysis, we suggest that they have a read of the following report on how Beijing has distanced itself from the genocide for its own self interest.
We reject this erasure of Palestine, from Terra Nullius implied by the Zionist catch cry, ‘a land without people for a people without land‘ to “uninhabitable” Gaza. Nor should others. -‘ Ian Curr, editor, 10 October 2025.