According to an adage explaining mathematics’ chaos theory, a mid-Atlantic hurricane could be caused by seemingly random and unrelated events, such as a butterfly flapping its wings in Beijing. On Tuesday, a butterfly flapped its wings in Beijing—and it’s brewing a storm over Jerusalem.

A China-hosted conference seems to have achieved the impossible: reconciling Fatah and Hamas. On July 23, 14 Palestinian factions signed the Beijing Declaration under mediation by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. China has yet to release the agreement’s text or the full list of participants to the public, but Wang claimed the agreement is a “historic moment for the cause of Palestine’s liberation.” He said, “The standout highlight is consensus around establishing an interim national reconciliation government to manage Gaza after the war.”

Photographs from the meeting show representatives from Fatah and Hamas. Wang said diplomats from Egypt, Algeria and Russia were also present.

Lebanese outlet Al Mayadeen received a copy of the Beijing Declaration. “[T]he participants agreed to form a temporary national unity government after the approval of Palestinian factions and the president of the Palestinian Authority,” it reported. “This government will exercise its authority ‘over all Palestinian territories,’ including the West Bank, [Jerusalem] and the Gaza Strip.” Egypt, Algeria and Russia are to help in the deal’s implementation.

If the agreement is legitimate, it is significant for two reasons.

Enemies No More?

Fatah and Hamas have been at each other’s throats almost as much as they have been at Israel’s. Hamas controls Gaza because of a local coup in 2007 against the Palestinian Authority, which Fatah dominates. The last time the two factions came close to uniting was in 2017, but that fell apart.

Hamas wants to turn the Palestinian territories into a totalitarian Islamist state. Fatah started with socialist ties but today is little more than an instrument of control for the kleptocratic regime of octogenarian PA President Mahmoud Abbas. The two sides have mostly irreconcilable visions.

But Hamas has lost its power base in Gaza. The international community, meanwhile, is pressuring Abbas to reform the PA. In practice, this means Abbas must give up control. Both sides have incentive to work together to prevent each other’s extinction.

But this deal, if followed through on, would mean something even more important. To this point, Hamas has been an international pariah. Foreign aid groups and others have had to work with Hamas (often, much more willingly than they would like to admit), but Hamas’s yearslong rule in Gaza has had no international legitimacy. The United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Canada and others list Hamas as a terrorist group.

China has always had warmer relations with Palestinian terror groups than the West has. But if Fatah and Abbas allowed Hamas into the PA or a replacement group, this would be a game changer. The world at large looks at the PA as the budding government of a Palestinian state. Actors like the U.S. and EU may not be willing to work with individual Palestinian factions directly, but they will work with them if they hide behind the PA. The Beijing Declaration would legitimize Hamas to the international community.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already ruled out either Hamas or the PA governing Gaza post-invasion. But the Beijing Declaration gives Hamas something more valuable than survival in Gaza: It gives Hamas legitimacy as part of the West Bank’s governance.

The West Bank has a larger area and population than Gaza. It borders Jerusalem, Hamas’s big prize. Thousands of Israelis live in West Bank settlements, giving Hamas easy targets. And last year’s October 7 massacre has made Hamas far more popular than Fatah among Palestinians.

Egypt, Israel’s neighbor to the south and one of its closest partners in the Arab world, supports the deal. So does Russia, a nuclear power and an influential player in arenas like Syria. China by purchasing power parity is the world’s largest economy. Some very influential countries support this deal. They may be influential enough to stop Israel from getting in the way of its implementation.

Time will tell if the agreement on paper translates into anything tangible on the ground. But if it does, expect this Chinese butterfly’s flapping to translate into a hurricane.

Sights on Jerusalem

The Trumpet expects West Bank politics to become more radical very soon. This is because of a prophecy in Zechariah 14:1-2: “Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, and thy spoil shall be divided in the midst of thee. For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished; and half of the city shall go forth into captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city.”

“Christ prophesied that He would ‘gather all nations’ to battle Him in Jerusalem,” Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry writes in Jerusalem in Prophecy. “Then He makes what might appear to be a strange statement. One half of Jerusalem is to be taken captive. Notice how specific this prophecy is. East Jerusalem—one half of the city—will be conquered by the Palestinians!” He continues:

Looking at the ongoing violence in Jerusalem today—the absolute inability of the involved parties to solve things by peaceful means—we can easily see how one half of Jerusalem shall be taken captive in the very near future. The present violence is an embryo that is about to explode into much greater violence. That is the critical event prophesied in Zechariah 14:2.

Right now, one half of the West Bank is under unpopular Abbas, who depends on Israel’s support to keep his wobbly throne. The other half is a lawless “wild west” where terrorist groups fight turf wars amid shootouts with the Israel Defense Forces. The West Bank is not in a state right now to seriously invade Israel proper. But a revitalized PA under Chinese sponsorship—with a bellicose and popular Hamas added as an official participant—could bring the Palestinians up to speed.

To learn more, request a free copy of Jerusalem in Prophecy.