Statement by Permanent Representative Vassily Nebenzia at the UN Security Council Meeting on the Middle East, including the Palestinian Question
Mm. Minister,
Let me welcome you in the Council. We thank Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nickolay Mladenov and Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) Pierre Krähenbühl for their substantive briefings.
Mm. President,
In two weeks from now – on June 4 – it will have been 52 years since Israel occupied Palestinian territories in the West Bank and the Gaza strip. This date is an important milestone of the conflict in the Middle East. It is also symbolic for Israelis as well as for Palestinians and Arabs in general. For example, for Syrians it means the loss of the Golan Heights that despite all remain an occupied Syrian territory. Unfortunately, this day was not the last tragic date in the Middle Eastern calendar. There came others.
As a result of various internal factors and a blatant interference from the outside, the region developed several more hotbeds of crisis, in particular in Yemen, Libya, Syria, Iraq. As the Republic of Iraq tends to normalize, and the Syrian Arab Republic has managed to stabilize the major part of its area, settlement of the conflicts in Yemen and Libya will still require much effort of the international community.
Recently there have emerged new tension concerning Iran. This artificial escalation may lead to the most negative effects for the entire Broader Middle East and beyond. We urgently need de-escalation and negotiated solutions to the existing contradictions. Confrontation should give way to dialogue. Let me remind of a relevant mandate of the Secretary-General pursuant to resolution 598 of the Security Council.
We should admit that everything happening in the region is closely interconnected. It is not a surprise since the region has a shared history of development and a shared civilizational space. To encourage and foster close amicable and mutually beneficial relations would help improve the situation in the entire region. By the same token, settlement of one conflict would help reconcile other spots of crisis.
In this regard, we believe it necessary to double efforts at the Palestinian-Israeli track. Fair solution to the Palestinian problem is crucial for improvement of the situation in the region. By contrast, should the conflict between Palestine and Israel continue it would be constantly poisoning the broad international environment, affect settlement of other regional crises and nourish terrorism.
We do not need to invent anything. There are negotiated and internationally acknowledged parameters, among them UNSC resolutions, “Madrid principles”, including “land for peace” principle, and the Arab Peace Initiative.
Someone might say that these principles have never lead to resolution of the Palestinian question and therefore were not relevant. However, the problem is not about the groundwork, which in any case should be subject to discussion by Palestinians and Israelis during direct negotiations. The problem is about factors that impede the resuming of the negotiation process.
These factors can be eliminated by implementing the recommendations contained in the report by the Middle Eastern Quartet of Mediators dated 2016. First of all, Israel should stop its settlement activity in the West Bank, as well as the policy of demolishing the Palestinian property. Both Palestinians and Israelis should abstain from aggressive and provocative rhetoric, give up violence. Joint efforts should be made in order to stop terrorist outings. Palestinians should restore unity in their ranks.
Palestinians and Israelis need some help to make first steps to implement the aforementioned recommendations. In such case, there will emerge a prospect to come up with a comprehensive, fair and reliable Palestinian-Israeli settlement. It should terminate Israel’s occupation of Arab territories that began in 1967 and establish an independent, viable and integral Palestinian State that would peacefully exist side-by-side with Israel, have safe and acknowledged borders and have a capital in Eastern Jerusalem. At the same time, Western Jerusalem would be the capital of the State of Israel.
We see no alternative to the two-state solution. We believe it is the only realistic prospect to put an end to the confrontation and reciprocal claims of Palestine and Israel. Other concepts only mislead and obscure prospects to resume political process. We do not think that Palestinians will abandon their legitimate claims to obtain statehood, no matter what they might be promised in return. Attempts to impose a ready-made solution on the sides will fail.
We are convinced that today as never before the need is ripe to make practical steps to lead the peace process out of this precarious deadlock. Russia will set forth efforts aimed at resuming direct dialogue between Palestinians and Israeli both on the bilateral basis and in other formats. Our initiative to convene a summit of M.Abbas and B.Netanjahu in Moscow remains on the table.
As long as the Palestinian question remains unregulated, we believe it is vital to continue assistance, i.a. financial, to UNRWA. Activities of the Agency have not only a humanitarian but also a political dimension; they have a stabilizing impact on the Palestinian territories and on States of the Middle East. We have recently completed our regular tranche to the UNRWA budget for 2019.
Mm. Minister,
Israel and Palestine are of great religious importance for hundreds of thousand adherents of monotheistic religions. Achieve peace at these territories promptly – this is something that falls into interests of all Christians, Muslims, and Jews.
Meanwhile, destabilization in the Middle East and the North of Africa have seriously struck at Christians and other religious and ethnical minorities living in the region. Extremists make use of ethnic and religious factors in order to incite hatred and replenish their ranks.
It is crucial to take urgent steps to promote inter-confessional and inter-ethnical culture of peace, which would prevent any new perturbations based on ethnic and confessional factors. Russia has a unique experience of peaceful coexistence of various ethnicities and confessions. Based on this, we support the initiative of the Inter-Parliamentary Union to hold a global conference jointly with the UN on inter-religious and inter-ethnical dialogue that would bring together heads of States, Members of Parliaments, and representatives of world’s religions. Russia stands ready to host this conference in 2022.
We advocate intensification of joint work on the Middle East in general, including in the framework of the Security Council. We are convinced sending UN Missions to conflict locations is aimed to sustain unity of the Council.
Russia is ready to cooperate with all interested partners on these and other aspects, given that cooperation is open and unbiased, void of threats and negative pressure.
Thank you.
