Lavrov at UNSC: Day Two West Asia & Palestine: Using Truth as a Hammer

Lavrov pulls out a verbal hammer at the end of his remarks at the second day of special UNSC hearings on Ukraine with today’s about the situation in West Asia and Palestine in particular. Here’s Sergey with all emphasis being mine:

Mr. President,

Mr. Secretary-General,

Ladies and gentlemen,

Today we are holding a meeting on the situation in the Middle East, primarily on the Palestinian issue, at a truly dramatic moment. Not only considerations of big politics, but also universal morality require us to take urgent measures to enact a ceasefire to end the suffering of the people in Palestine. Likewise, there is a need for steps aimed at preventing further destabilization of the situation in other parts of the Middle East.

So far, our Council has not been able to provide an adequate response to this truly fateful challenge. The reason is well-known – it is the position of the United States, which blocks all efforts and initiatives to stop the bloodshed in the occupied territories. The cunning of American diplomacy, which alternately vetoes ceasefire resolutions and calls for a "reduction in the intensity" of hostilities in Gaza, is astonishing. Clearly, this gives carte blanche to continue the collective punishment of the Palestinians.

On the eve of our meeting, we made another attempt to elicit a united response from the Council to what was happening and proposed a draft presidential statement demanding an immediate humanitarian ceasefire. However, the United States and its allies blocked this document, confirming that saving the lives of Palestinian civilians is not one of their priorities.

The humanitarian consequences of such a policy are dire. Almost 30,000 civilians were killed, including a huge number of women and children. Northern Gaza is almost completely destroyed and uninhabitable. 80% of the total population of the sector are internally displaced persons. A real human tragedy with no end in sight.

The shortage of all vital necessities has reached alarming proportions. I would like to draw your attention to an article in The Jerusalem Post on January 5, written by Professor David Nitzan of Ben-Gurion University (formerly the WHO Emergency Coordinator). The article is based on the assessments of environmental experts, including Israeli specialists. Assessments cast doubt on whether Gaza will ever be habitable after the conflict ends.

As a result of the bombardment, the soil, groundwater, coastal sea area, and the atmosphere are already unprecedentedly polluted with a thick layer of products of explosions and combustion, destroyed equipment, ammunition, chemicals, decomposing biomass (no matter how terrible it may sound), household waste and sewage. Natural sources of drinking water have disappeared. In fact, the sewage infrastructure has been destroyed. It is estimated that 22% of Gaza's agricultural land will never be restored. Tens of thousands of cases of diarrhea, acute respiratory diseases, scabies, skin rashes and other diseases have been recorded. The risk of epidemics has increased dramatically. The lack of humanitarian access is recognized by the World Health Organization as the main obstacle to the delivery of humanitarian aid. WHO has canceled six planned humanitarian missions to the northern Gaza Strip since the end of December 2023 after requests were denied.

In order to alleviate the suffering of the people of Gaza, Russia, like a number of other countries, has sent hundreds of tons of food, medical devices and medicines to the Gaza Strip. We support the UN humanitarian agencies on the ground, who, unfortunately, are also victims of the war, including 150 dead. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres recently spoke about this, describing this figure as unprecedented in the history of the Organisation's participation in various operations in conflict zones.

Of particular concern is the propagation of abhorrent ideas such as the forcible displacement of Palestinians from their places of origin. Such a scenario is unacceptable and should not be implemented under any circumstances. The massive violence by the Israeli army and Jewish settlers in the West Bank must also be stopped immediately, and any attempt to undermine the status quo of Jerusalem's holy sites must be ruled out.

The failure of this Council to take exhaustive measures has led to the fact that the current escalation of the conflict in Palestine has metastasized throughout the region. And once again, not without the disastrous participation of the United States and its allies, whose military presence in the Middle East, as well as in other parts of the Eurasian continent, creates new unacceptable risks to international security. We categorically condemn the unjustified aggression against Yemen undertaken under the leadership of Washington and London without the sanction of the UN Security Council. The actions of the Anglo-Saxons pose a direct threat to international peace and undermine a world order based not on their "rules" but on the supremacy of universal international law and the central role of the United Nations. We also condemn Israel's bombing of Syria, including strikes that are declared to be aimed at structures that are legally present in that country at the invitation of its legitimate government. Political assassinations must stop. The situation on Lebanon's border with Israel is explosive.

It is obvious that unilateral military actions only exacerbate the already difficult situation in the Middle East. A situation that has not developed today and reflects a long history. We are talking about the repeated invasions of independent states by the Americans and their satellites, which led to hundreds of thousands of deaths in Iraq, the destruction of statehood in Libya, the war in Syria, huge flows of refugees, and an unprecedented surge in international terrorism, including on the African continent.

Russia does not accept terrorist manifestations in any form. We also categorically condemned the attacks on civilians in Israel on October 7, 2023. Unlike some of our Western colleagues, who profess double standards, we do not divide extremists into "bad" and "good," into "us" and "them." We insist on the release of all detainees in Gaza, regardless of their nationality and origin.

Mr. President,

Today, we hear more and more often, primarily from Western representatives, calls to focus not on today, but on the "day after" of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, as if the escalation in Gaza had already stopped and the situation there allegedly no longer required the Council's attention. But the cunning logic of the Western delegations is obvious. By blocking all the Council's much-needed efforts to call on the parties to a ceasefire, the United States and its allies want to turn this extremely uncomfortable page as soon as possible, which makes them complicit in the carnage unleashed against the civilian population in Gaza.

I would like to emphasise that the UN Security Council must still fulfil its mandate and call for a ceasefire. Otherwise, there is no guarantee that hostilities will not resume with renewed vigor. And in the absence of such a guarantee, as well as the unconditional implementation of UN decisions on the creation of a Palestinian state, all talk about "tomorrow" is not only premature, but also pointless. And this is well understood by potential donors who could invest in the future reconstruction of Gaza.

When it comes to discussing the parameters of "tomorrow", the following factors should be of fundamental importance.

First, the consolidated will of the Palestinian people themselves. The Palestinians, who have been deprived of a chance for statehood for decades, deserve to see this issue finally resolved. The first and foremost condition for this is the unity of the Palestinian nation itself. We trust that our Palestinian brothers and sisters will show strategic wisdom and renounce all opportunistic considerations and internecine strife that impede nation-building. They should decide for themselves what their future state should look like, who should govern it and how. In my opinion, our Western colleagues call this democracy. The imposition of solutions from the outside and the "social engineering" so beloved by Western colleagues are categorically unacceptable here.

No less important is the unity of the positions of all external players, who should be guided not by their own political interests and plans in the region, trying to transmit them through one or another Palestinian faction, but by the imperative of finding a speedy solution to the centuries-old conflict. Russia has made its proposals on how to achieve this goal. They could be an important element of a new effective mediation mechanism that enjoys the confidence of both Palestinians and Israelis. We will continue this work.

The second key factor is the inviolability of the two-state formula for a Palestinian-Israeli settlement and the imperative to implement it as soon as possible. We are extremely concerned about the statements of the Israeli leadership that cast doubt on it. We would also like to draw your attention to the extremely vague statements made by the US Department of State leadership in this regard. It seems that Washington is once again relying on its supposedly "effective" but in fact absolutely failed bilateral diplomacy, hoping to somehow "settle" the parameters of the Middle East settlement that are beneficial to it before the November elections and not caring at all about the long-term consequences.

We have seen all this many times before. Each round of the arrogant unilateral policy of the United States in the Middle East, its separate, "shuttle" negotiations with the Party of Regions, accompanied by financial promises, ends in an increasingly bloody outbreak of escalation. That is what happened this time. Washington first "buried" the work of the Quartet of international mediators, and now it is consistently blocking all international efforts to de-escalate within the framework of the UN Security Council. The cynical short-sightedness of the US leadership is well illustrated by the statement by President Joe Biden's National Security Adviser, a week before October 7, 2023, that "the Middle East region has not been so calm over the past two decades."

Colleagues (and I am addressing my Western colleagues), the whole world is waiting for you to realise that your persistent disregard for multilateral diplomacy and its outright sabotage have repeatedly led to tragic results.

For Russia, as well as for the overwhelming majority of members of the international community, it is obvious that the logic of confrontation on the Palestinian issue can be overcome only through joint efforts based primarily on the interests of the states of the region. It is they who must ultimately decide his fate. The germs of such positive processes have already been outlined: the normalization of relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia with the assistance of China has begun, Syria's membership in the Arab League has been restored, and a dialogue between Damascus and Ankara is being established.

The task of any international mediation is not to interfere in these processes, not to turn the region into a platform for geopolitical struggle, but to create the most favourable external conditions for restoring trust between the countries located here.

This is what all Russian initiatives for a Middle East settlement are aimed at. After the acute phase of the current crisis, which should be facilitated by the UN Security Council's joint call for a ceasefire, we propose to convene consultations at the ministerial level to consolidate the positions of key regional players and develop practical steps on their basis to facilitate the restoration of Palestinian unity.

At the next stage, the format of an international conference on the Middle East settlement will be in demand, as the representatives who spoke before me have said. Its goal is the proclamation of a Palestinian state, the development of measures to ensure the reliable security of Israel and the normalization of its relations with all Arab and Muslim countries in general. Russia came up with the idea of convening such a conference in this hall about 15 years ago. Hopefully this idea gets the attention it deserves.

The broader idea of creating a collective security system in the Persian Gulf and in the Middle East as a whole, which would consolidate trust, transparency and guarantees of equal security for all countries in the region, remains on the table. As you know, Russia has specific proposals in this regard, which we have been discussing with all interested countries for a long time. The above is our vision for moving forward. But first, I repeat, it is necessary to achieve an immediate ceasefire.

In conclusion, I would like to call on the members of the Security Council not to succumb to the exhortations of the United States that they allegedly have "everything under control" and that they are "resolving issues on the ground," and not to postpone the creation of a Palestinian state until better times. It is important that the UN Security Council not only reaffirm that there is no alternative to the existing international legal framework on this most pressing issue, but also outline specific ways and deadlines for its implementation. These are not just obligations arising from UN General Assembly and Security Council resolutions, the Madrid Principles and other decisions. That is the moral imperative of the international community, and we call for it to be fulfilled.

Mr. Chairman,

Today, some delegations considered it possible to repeat the accusations against Russia in connection with the special military operation against the Nazi regime in Kiev with a memorized tongue twister. Colleagues, I leave these statements on your conscience, although I understand that she will endure a lot.

I would like to emphasise a fundamental point. We have no right to allow the UN decisions on the creation of a Palestinian state to be "buried", as the 2015 Minsk Agreements, unanimously approved by the UN Security Council, were "buried", the guarantors of which were France and Germany, which later admitted that they did not even think of implementing them. Such criminal acts against the Palestinian people must not be allowed to happen again.

The Romans sowed the ground with salt so it was untillable as the finishing touch on their genocidal methods and the Zionists have merely modernized the method. I say we put the Zionist settlers in Gaza and let the Palestinians have the rest of Palestine. The offensive against the Outlaw US Empire was well put as was the overall argument for immediate action on mandating a ceasefire. How much of Lavrov’s and other’s views get media exposure will be important, although we can assume very little will be aired or published within NATOstan. The accusations against US, UK, and France for gross violations of UNSC Resolutions were very strong and 100% correct, but those nations have no sense of honor or morality, so I expect a continuing blockade of the required action to send the conflict into a political phase. We’ll see what happens today.

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