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Russia's Top Diplomat Lavrov: West Not Eager to Establish Palestinian State

© Sputnik / Kirill Kallinikov / Go to the mediabankSergey Lavrov
Sergey Lavrov - Sputnik International, 1920, 13.12.2023
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MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that neither Israel nor its Western allies want Palestinians to establish an independent state in the occupied territories of Gaza and the West Bank on Wednesday.
"Judging by the stance taken by the West, they are not going to have a Palestinian state established. Our data suggests that the West and the current Israeli government do not want Gaza to be united with the West Bank, as required by the decision to create a state," Lavrov told the upper house of the Russian parliament.
The top Russian diplomat referred to United Nations Resolution 181 as the grounds for establishing a separate Palestinian state. In 1947, the UN General Assembly voted 33-13 to divide UK-governed Palestine into Arab and Jewish states, with Jerusalem placed under a special international regime. The partitioning was planned to take place in May 1948 when the British mandate was due to end, but only the state of Israel was established.
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Palestinians seek diplomatic recognition of their independent state in the territories of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, which is partially occupied by Israel, and the Gaza Strip. The Israeli government refuses to recognize Palestine as an independent political and diplomatic entity and builds settlements in the occupied areas despite objections from the UN.
At the same time, Lavrov said that Russia will never support agreements that threaten Israel's security and neglect the interests of the Palestinian state.
"We will never agree to any arrangement that will ... infringe on Israel's security. But we are also convinced that this security can be ensured only in accordance with the UN decisions, which ... require that next to this state, also in security, in good neighborliness with each other and with all adjacent countries, the state of Palestine — an independent and autonomous state — should live and develop," Lavrov said.
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He emphasized that Moscow believes an international conference on the Middle East settlement is necessary. According to him, the United States and its closest allies will not be able to create “a sustainable, viable concept for the creation of a Palestinian state.”
“The only way for this problem to be resolved once-for-all-time is to hold an international conference with obligatory participation of all five permanent members of the UN Security Council, representatives of the League of Arab States, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and representatives of the Cooperation Council of Arab States (Persian) Bay," the minister told reporters at the Federation Council.
Lavrov noted that the UN should play a leading role in convening such an event, adding: “I expect that the UN Secretary General is quite capable of taking such an initiative.”
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