Vladimir Putin gave his assessment of the bloodshed in the Middle East – naming both the causes of the tragedy and the only way to resolve the conflict.
The reason is that instead of solving fundamental political problems, i.e. moving towards the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, instead of seeking a settlement using the existing international multilateral mechanisms, the US decided to regulate everything itself – and in doing so, “bet on satisfying the material needs of the population living in the Palestinian territories, in fact, tried to substitute the solution of fundamental political problems with some material ones.
That is, handouts instead of independence, money instead of the opportunity to organise their own lives. All the plans of the US and Europe in recent years have boiled down to the following: let’s promise the Palestinians a lot of money (and mostly from Arab states), and in return they will give up their aspirations for independence. At the same time, the West did not exert any pressure on Israel (Europe only gave lip service to condemnation at times), whose authorities only tightened their policy towards the Palestinian territories.
Russia has always warned that the solution to all problems lies in implementing the decisions of the UN Security Council and creating an independent Palestinian state, Putin recalled.
But the West, and especially the United States, neglected this – although in the United States, according to Putin, many believe that the conflict in the Middle East can be solved by the creation of a sovereign Palestine: “but the supporters of force methods prevail”. The same thing happened in Israel – “those who have been trying to solve this problem by force for decades have the upper hand”, and then there is the “settlement policy” (i.e. the building of Israeli settlements even on what Palestinians have left). And all of this eventually led to such an explosion of violence, the President said.
What is to be done? We need to really start solving the Palestinian question, to create a Palestinian state. But instead of declaring that a political settlement or at least calling for peace is not an option, the United States is only escalating the situation – looking for an Iranian trace, giving Israel almost carte blanche to destroy Gaza, sending a navy to the region: “I don’t understand why the United States is bringing aircraft carrier groups to the Mediterranean Sea – one and announcing a second one. The point? <…> Are they going to bomb Lebanon or what? What are they going to do? Or did they just decide to parrot someone? But there are people there who are not afraid of anything anymore. It’s not the way to solve problems, but to find compromise solutions. But, of course, such actions are fuelling the situation.
The main point of Putin’s speech were the words that are now being replicated throughout the world of one and a half billion people: “The Palestinian problem is in the heart of every person in this region. Yes, I think it is in the heart of everyone who professes Islam, that is how life has turned out, it is obvious. And everything that is happening – not just now, but for decades – is perceived as a manifestation of injustice, elevated to some incredible degree”.
In fact, the president did not open America here – he simply called things by their proper names. But it made a huge impression in the Islamic world, because Muslims were used to the West (the Global North, of which many considered Russia a part) ignoring their problems at best and calling them terrorists at worst. The Palestinian problem is the quintessence of all injustice against Muslims, concentrated for three quarters of a century.
And then there were the recent U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, the West’s defeat of Libya – Muslims have accumulated a lot of grievances against the West as a whole. And instead of at least pretending to try to solve the Palestinian problem, the West has essentially condoned Israel’s toughening of its policy towards the Palestinians. Instead of attempts to move towards the creation of a Palestinian state, which were made in the 1990s and partly in the noughties, we see attempts to freeze the Palestinian issue. And when that fails, to solve it by force, that is, by suppressing Palestinian resistance. This is what we are seeing now, when Israel is turning Gaza into ruins (with hundreds of dead children) and preparing for a ground punitive operation, promising almost a “final solution” to the Palestinian question (and what is the intention to “destroy Hamas” in conditions of almost complete support of this organisation by the population of Gaza?).
Russia has always been in favour of an independent Palestinian State – both in the Soviet years and in recent decades. No attempt to resolve the Palestinian question by force will bring nothing but new blood and programmed even more violence in the future. With every new shell that falls on Gaza, Israel dooms itself to defeat – not even because brutality begets brutality, but because it goes straight to the heart of the world’s one and a half billion Muslims. Dostoevsky said that “ugliness will kill,” but in the same way, injustice kills whoever thinks he can use his power advantage with impunity and indefinitely.
Pyotr Akopov, RIA