Statement by Deputy Permanent Representative Vladimir Safronkov at the Security Council meeting on the situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question
Mr. President,
We thank Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nickolay Mladenov for his briefing on the situation in the occupied Palestinian territories. Solving the Palestinian problem and ensuring comprehensive settlement in the Middle East should remain a priority for global diplomacy. We say so, because the Middle East remains engulfed in destabilizing trends. Many of them have been deliberately imported from the outside.
As a result, old crises remain, and new ones emerge. In the recent days, tension has escalated in the Persian Gulf. In our view, this tension is inflated deliberately. This crisis poses a threat to peace and security in the region, and to global efforts to settle the regional conflicts, including the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. We warn everyone: any reckless use of force, should it happen, will turn out to be a disaster, to say the least. What can follow is splashes of violence and new migration flows. Effects on those who might make such attempts would be regrettable.
We require swift de-escalation and search for negotiated solutions to the existing disputes. Confrontation should give way to dialogue. Let me remind of the relevant mandate of the Secretary-General stipulated by Security Council resolution 598. According to this document, the Secretary-General in collaboration with regional powers should develop security measures for the region. This should be indivisible security, same for everyone, without preferences in favor of separate States. The formula “What is permissible for ones is not permissible for others” will not work.
No new “division lines” should obliterate the positive results that have been recently achieved in the region. Normal life is gradually getting back on track at the bigger part of the territory of Syria. Political and economic assistance is provided to Iraq – the country that chose good neighborly relations as priority track of foreign policy. Special Representatives of the Secretary-General continue to search for solutions to conflicts in other hotspots of the region.
Steps are made to consolidate efforts to combat terrorist threat that can only be eradicated if we act as a united front that is as broad as possible.
At the same time, search for solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which is central to the Middle Eastern crisis, remains stuck. Recently this track has become dominated by precarious trends, e.g. unilateral steps and aggressive revision of previously negotiated agreements. For us, the internationally acknowledged basis of the Middle Eastern settlement remains impregnable. It includes Security Council resolutions, “Arab Peace Initiative” and “Madrid principles”. We see no alternative to the two-State solution. Any proposals to improve the economy of Palestinian territories should be “in one package” with political components of the settlement, otherwise peace initiatives will be doomed. Let me highlight that there is a lasting international consensus regarding this issue. I remind that the status of the occupied Palestinian territories, and that of other occupied territories, including the Syrian Golan Heights, is defined by the relevant resolutions of the Security Council. No unilateral steps are able to change this reality.
We are firmly convinced that when acting alone, no breakthroughs can be achieved. History only proves this. We believe the Middle Eastern Quartet of Mediators – format that has been endorsed by several UNSC resolutions, remains up-to-date and highly demanded. Its report dated 2016 contains a detailed roadmap to resume a sustainable political process.
Russia has historically maintained confidential and amicable relations with both Palestinians and Israel. That is why we are convinced – political process and the two-State solution respond both to Palestine’s aspirations and Israel’s security concerns.
We believe it necessary to engage the regionals and the LAS in efforts to achieve peace in Palestine and the entire Middle East. We advocate a strong LAS that is united on all issues, including the Palestinian question. Russia will continue to assist in building a positive agenda for the Middle Eastern settlement. Our proposal to hold a summit between the leaders of Palestine and Israel remains on the table. Time has long come to implement the Russian initiative to deploy a UN Security Council Mission in the Middle East. Over decades, we have established contacts with all sides, therefore we will help restore Palestinian unity. We appreciate the relevant efforts of the Arab Republic of Egypt.
There is a need for active global steps to improve the depressed humanitarian situation in Gaza. Any assistance to Gaza should be provided in coordination with legitimate President M.Abbas and be part of action aimed at restoring Palestinian unity. We assume that the UN and all sides will be guided by this principle.
We will robustly support activities of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) that have both a humanitarian and a political dimension.
Mr. President,
The lack of stability in the Middle East requires unifying action. We need prompt steps to steer Palestinian-Israeli settlement out of the deadlock. It is crucial to make steps to spread an inter-confessional culture of peace, which will help to prevent renewed perturbations on the ethnic and confessional basis. It will also help protect Christians and other religious minorities who have lived in the Middle East for many centuries and constituted its essential cultural and civilizational layer. They have professed the principles of tolerance, but became target for genocide and had to leave the region.
Thereby one should not pursue the logic of spreading the outdated bloc thinking, but be guided by an aspiration to create a platform for dialogue where solutions to Middle Eastern problems can be developed. Once again, we draw your attention to the relevant Russian initiative regarding security architecture in the Middle East. Russia stands ready for a constructive cooperation with our partners on all the items of Middle Eastern agenda. However, this cooperation can only be based on the conviction that there can be no military alternative to political settlement. It means that frivolous provisions of the so called “rules-based order” should be abandoned, and everyone should get back to the basics: respect for the fundamental principles of the UN Charter and the international law.
Thank you.
