Palestine appreciates Russia's actions, paving the way for the activation of the Middle East Quartet (Russia, US, UN and EU) to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Palestinian Ambassador to Moscow Abdel Hafiz Nofal said.
"We appreciated Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's talks with Palestinian and Israeli counterparts and his invitation to Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki to visit Moscow," he said in an interview with Izvestia published Monday. According to the diplomat, all this is good ground for an attempt to intensify the work of the Middle East Quartet in order to achieve a settlement of the conflict.
"We are confident in the Russian position and Russian support. We are talking about the need to establish two states on the basis of UN resolutions, international law and the Arab Peace Initiative," Abdel Hafiz Nofal noted.
The ambassador recalled that Russia had offered to organize a meeting between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Moscow. "Netanyahu never responded to the proposal," the diplomat said, adding that the Israeli PM left the issue open for "several years without either approving or rejecting it," citing various reasons.
Nofal stressed that without a serious, real and effective international intervention it would be impossible to end the violence in the region.
Answering a question about the likelihood of the current escalation leading to rocket attacks between Israel and Gaza, the ambassador said: "I don't think so. Israel reportedly has agreements with Hamas on this issue. Right now, specifically, tensions are almost entirely affecting the West Bank [Jordan River], the main clashes are going on there." That is also where, he noted, the new Israeli cabinet is going to "implement its radical initiatives." The entire Palestine is highly opposed to Israeli measures, but the situation around Jerusalem is more tense than ever, the diplomat concluded.
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Photo: Maxim Grigoriev / TASS
Based on materials from TASS