It takes a moderate stance on the conflict with Israel, favoring a two-state solution where the Palestinian state would be built on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital.
However, in recent years Hamas has accepted a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza as a temporary solution to the conflict, supporting the pre-1967 borders in its 2017 charter.
In hosting the conference, analysts including Foreign Policy reporter Amy Mackinnon saw China as seeking to position itself as a rival mediator to the United States in the Middle East.
[40] Analyst Dominika Urhová described the Beijing Declaration as a continuation of earlier Chinese attempts to play a prominent diplomatic role in the area, citing the five-point peace plan which China proposed at the United Nations Security Council in November 2023.
[41] Hani al-Masri, director of the Palestinian Centre for Policy Research and Strategic Studies (Masarat), suggested that Mahmoud Abbas - by engaging in a China-led agreement - "wants to show the Americans and also the Arabs that ‘I have other choices’".
Masri was also more sceptical about the perceived shift in Chinese policy towards a more pro-Palestinian stance, stating that China has not made any steps to "punish Israel, with whom it has special relations" within the UN or other international organisations.
[18] However, researcher Jehad Harb argued that the most surprising aspect of the declaration was the shift in Hamas's political thought, as it committed for the first time in an unambiguous way "to the establishment of a Palestinian state according to UN resolutions".
[42][43] Jack Khoury of Haaretz cited a senior Fatah official as saying "the joint statement was mainly intended to show respect to the Chinese hosts, as in similar past conventions in Moscow and Algeria, and therefore it does not have much practical significance.
In 2023, after an earlier visit by Abbas to Beijing, Baroud had been sceptical: "Palestinians need China, as they need other powerful players in the Global South, but it is not mediation that they desperately require.