China’s Foreign Ministry said rival Palestinian groups Hamas and Fatah met for talks in Beijing in April 2024, but social media posts praising Beijing shared old photos that falsely claimed to have shown the meeting. The Foreign Ministry did not identify the Hamas and Fatah representatives who met in Beijing on May 15, 2024. The photos in the posts were taken when Hamas and Fatah leaders met for talks in Egypt’s capital, Cairo, in October 2017.
“Historic moment! Hamas and Fatah have been fighting for 18 years, but they actually shook hands and made peace in Beijing… China is a peacemaker!” read a Weibo post shared on April 28, 2024.
Similar posts on Facebook It is social media platform shared two other photos from the leaders’ meeting.
Representatives of Hamas and Fatah met in Beijing in April for “in-depth and frank talks on promoting intra-Palestinian reconciliation,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said. on April 30th.
The Islamic movement Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, after fierce fighting with its rivals in Fatah, which maintains partial administrative control in the West Bank occupied by Israel through the Palestinian Authority.
Beijing has called for an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza war, triggered by the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, which resulted in the deaths of around 1,170 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP report based on official Israeli numbers.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive killed more than 35,170 people in the Gaza Strip, most of them women and children, the Ministry of Health in the territory controlled by Hamas said on Tuesday.
However, China’s Lin did not identify the Hamas and Fatah representatives who met in Beijing.
The ministry has not released official photos of the meeting so far. May 15, 2024.
Conversations in Cairo
Reverse Google image searches and keyword searches found that the three images circulating online were old and misrepresented in posts.
All were distributed by AFP and show a meeting between Hamas and Fatah officials in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, in October 2017.
A photo showing two men shaking hands was taken by AFP photographer Khaled Desouki and may be visa in the AFP archives.
The caption read in part: “Mazama al-Ahmad (R) of Fatah and Saleh al-Aruri (L) of Hamas shake hands after signing a reconciliation agreement in Cairo on October 12, 2017, as the two Palestinian movements rivals ended their decade-long division after Egyptian-supervised negotiations.”
Desouki also took the second photo showing the men signing a document during the same meeting in Cairo.
Below are screenshot comparisons between the photos shared in the fake posts (left) and the original AFP images (right):
Hamas and Fatah signed an agreement on October 12, 2017 to end a decade-long rift following Egyptian-mediated talks in Cairo, with President Mahmud Abbas calling it a “final” agreement. AFP reported at the time.
The agreement was signed by the then deputy leader of Hamas, Salah al-Aruri, and Azzam al-Ahmad, head of the Fatah delegation for the talks, at the headquarters of Egypt’s intelligence service, which oversaw the negotiations.
An Israeli attack dead Saleh al-Aruri in Beirut in January 2024, according to a US Department of Defense official.
The third photo, which shows the two leaders kissing, was also from the same meeting.
It was taken by the Nurphoto news agency and distributedby AFP with a caption similar to the other two photos.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the photo shared with the false claim (left) and the corresponding image on the AFP Forum (right):
AFP verified more misinformation about the Israel-Hamas war here.
