China, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas

OPINION:

For months, the Biden administration has insisted that the Palestinian Authority should govern the Gaza Strip after the current war between Israel and the Hamas terrorists is over. The idea, pushed hard by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, was that a supposedly rejuvenated Palestinian Authority would govern Gaza with some sort of Israeli security overlay. 

Israel has always opposed the idea, believing correctly that the Palestinian Authority is too closely connected to terrorism and too weak to govern anything. 

The Biden-Blinken idea of such a government for Gaza’s future was blown out of the water by the July 23 agreement between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas known as the Beijing Declaration, signed by both parties in the presence of their smiling hosts. The agreement has not only destroyed the Biden administration’s idea but has also made China a bigger player in the Middle East generally and the Israel-Hamas war in particular.

China’s implicit endorsement of Hamas has put it squarely on the side of the terrorists who, we should remember, killed about 1,200 people in their Oct. 7 attack. Hamas also took about 240 people hostage, including eight Americans. 

At least three Americans have died in Hamas custody, and five are still being held. President Biden has done nothing to secure their release.

Hamas will use the Beijing Declaration to claim some degree of diplomatic legitimacy. That is part of what China has in mind, of course. Other parts of China’s game are to make itself equal or superior to the U.S. in arbitrating an end to the Israel-Hamas war. China can use that leverage with the Arab states to damage what is left of former President Donald Trump’s Abraham Accords.

The Abraham Accords, under which several Arab countries recognized and commenced diplomatic relations with Israel, were the biggest achievement of the Trump presidency. Saudi Arabia, the most influential of the Arab states, had been negotiating with Israel to join the accords, but those negotiations were undermined — if not destroyed — by the war and Hamas’ propagandized claims that magnified the number of civilian casualties.

Because the Saudis have an existential fear of Iran, those negotiations are delayed further by China’s injecting itself into the war and giving Hamas — again, Iran’s proxy — diplomatic legitimacy.

The effects of China’s endorsement of the Palestinian Authority-Hamas agreement will grow clearer. It may mean Chinese funding and perhaps arming Hamas to mount more attacks on Israel. It obviously means that China supports Hamas as an equal partner with the Palestinian Authority in governing a Palestinian state, the declaration of which is another of Mr. Biden’s goals. 

If elected president, Vice President Kamala Harris will seek a Palestinian state. On national security and foreign policy, she will be indistinguishable from Mr. Biden except in cases when she will be worse. For example, she has already made clear her antipathy toward Israel. 

In his July speech to a joint session of Congress, boycotted by Ms. Harris and other Democrats, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sketched a vague outline of a postwar Gaza’s future. He said that it should be deradicalized and that Israel’s future lies with more peaceful relations with its Arab neighbors. That means expansion of Mr. Trump’s Abraham Accords, which China will try to block.

China’s ambitions in the Middle East are no less voracious than they are in the South China Sea. Its alliance with Iran — the world’s principal sponsor of terrorism — should be a major sore point between the U.S. and China. It isn’t because Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris ignore it.

Chinese President Xi Jinping proposed the strategic agreement with Iran, which was signed in 2021. The Iran-China pact is a 25-year agreement for “political, strategic, and economic” cooperation. Under it, China has become the major buyer of Iranian oil in defiance of American sanctions.

Russia has a similar agreement with Iran. The three form a new version of former President George W. Bush’s “axis of evil.”

The China-Iran agreement probably includes sending Iran arms and certainly includes intelligence-sharing. It probably also includes a Chinese military presence in Iran. That presence — for the Chinese army and naval and air forces — will grow in accordance with the intent of both nations. China’s military presence in Iran means it will protect Iran and create a new threat to Israel, Europe and the United States. 

China understands better than Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris do that Hamas is an Iranian proxy. China has put its 2021 agreement with Iran into practice by engineering the Hamas-Palestinian Authority agreement. By doing so, it has gained more regional power and probably frustrated any expansion of the Abraham Accords.

There is, as usual, a lot we should be doing but won’t. The president, vice president, secretary of state and our ambassador to the U.N. should be condemning China’s support for Hamas and Iran. They won’t because Mr. Biden’s approach to China and Iran has always been appeasement. We can expect the same from Ms. Harris if, heaven forbid, she is elected president.

• Jed Babbin is a national security and foreign affairs columnist for The Washington Times and contributing editor for The American Spectator.