Truce or total war? Please wait. While the world waits to see if the Middle Eastern crisis will be frozen with a truce or will descend into chaos, with a potential conflict between Israel and Iran on the southern borders of Europe, there is another point that should interest us as Italians, Europeans and Westerners. Winning without firing a shot, sitting at the peace table and dealing the cards without having suffered a single death, has always been the dream of all powers, large and small.
Rarely in the course of history has it happened that in large-scale conflicts someone has succeeded in the intent, but what is happening now is incredible: China today appears to be the real winner of the new Great War in pieces that is being fought around the world. Not only in Ukraine, where its shrewd policy of protector-financier of Russia but without exposing itself too much has allowed it to subdue Moscow and expand its zone of influence, but also in the Middle East, where the Chinese capitalist-communist regime is working under the shelter of an only apparently third position.
All thanks to the lack of strategic initiative by the West, which only hastily tried to get going again after the elimination in Tehran of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and the consequent risk of a regional war. It was the Chinese who brought together 14 Palestinian factions in Beijing less than a month ago, issuing a joint document that represents the basis on which a Palestinian state can be recognized tomorrow.
It is no coincidence that eight days later the political leader of Hamas was killed. Beijing’s agreement has induced Tel Aviv to shuffle the cards and signal its opposition to this solution. A message addressed first and foremost to the leadership of the Dragon therefore, because China is today the real covered actor moving in the area. A condition that had already been signaled by the success of the mediation of the red mandarins in the historic agreement for the normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
For Tehran, the Chinese initiative is essential in order to break international isolation and strengthen its policy of “looking to the East”. For China, Iran represents a decisive territory in the creation of Eurasian trade corridors. So much for the West, which would have been happy to have Russia and its influence in the region on its side in this game. But instead of dividing the enemy front, Washington has brought them together with a strategic hara-kiri that will go down in the history books, as soon as the latter is freed from the burden of the news. At present, the only way out of this nightmare would be a large-scale diplomatic initiative to redraw the zones of influence, but Europe’s ineptitude and the incapacity of the US Administration do not allow this.
So the Chinese are trying to open up a space for mediation. Israel has understood this perfectly. The meaning of the agreement that was reached in Beijing between Hamas and the emissaries of the leader of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), Abu Mazen, was clear: an agreement for a future government of Gaza and the West Bank that would mark the disastrous continuity of the Palestinian leadership. It confirmed on the one hand the terrorist pressure of Hamas, on the other the corrupt and ineffective management of the Territories by Abu Mazen.
But Israel is not willing to change everything so that nothing changes: so it surgically eliminated Haniyeh, the highest political representative of the terrorist movement. It was he and Yahya Sinwar, the architect of the October 7 massacre, who unleashed and directed the Palestinian civil war in the Strip in 2007, which allowed Hamas to impose itself in Gaza. It is with such figures that China seeks an agreement that will weaken the Western position in the region. Even in Palestine, the real confrontation is between the US and China, lined up on opposite sides.
