SpaceWar.com reports: “Senior officials from the rival Palestinian groups Hamas, which is at war with Israel, and Fatah have agreed to meet in Beijing this month in a renewed bid for reconciliation, officials said Monday.

The Hamas delegation is to be headed by its Qatar-based political chief Ismail Haniyeh, while the Fatah representation will be led by deputy head Mahmud Alul, Fatah sources said.

Hamas had no immediate comment.

The two groups have been bitter rivals since Hamas fighters ejected Fatah from the Gaza Strip after deadly clashes that followed Hamas’s resounding victory in a 2006 election.

After seizing control of Gaza in 2007, the Islamist Hamas movement has ruled the territory ever since.

The secularist Fatah movement controls the Palestinian Authority which has partial administrative control in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Several reconciliation bids have failed, but calls have grown since the Hamas October 7 attacks on Israel set off the Gaza war, with violence also soaring in the West Bank where Fatah is based…”