Palestinian issue isn’t resolved – Lavrov

The final settlement would require a two-state solution, Russia’s foreign minister has said

US President Donald Trump’s peace plan for Gaza is “the best thing on the table” at the moment, but it does not fully solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.

Hamas has released all 20 surviving hostages taken by the group during its incursion into Israel two years ago, and West Jerusalem has begun to free 2,000 Palestinian prisoners as part of Trump’s 20-point roadmap to end the Gaza war.

The US president has arrived in Israel for the event. Addressing the country’s national legislature, the Knesset, he said that the swap marked the beginning of “the golden age of the Middle East.”

Speaking about Trump’s plan with the Arabic media on Monday, Lavrov said that Russia has “repeatedly assessed [it] as the best thing on the negotiating table at the moment.”

It is essential “to stop the bloodshed as soon as possible and resolve the grave humanitarian problems” in Gaza, he said.

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However, the minister noted that “of course, the Palestinian issue is not resolved by this.”

He stressed that Trump’s plan mainly focuses on the situation in Gaza, while only addressing the Palestinian statehood in the most general terms. The United States and Israel were two of only ten countries which flatly rejected a two-state solution at last month’s UN General Assembly meeting; the others included Tonga, Palau, Nauru and Micronesia.

The final settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would require “the creation of a single, territorially integral Palestinian state within the 1967 borders” in line with the relevant UN Security Council resolutions, Lavrov said. Moscow remains committed to the two-state solution to the crisis, he added.

Trump’s plan acknowledges self-determination and statehood as “the aspiration” of the Palestinian people, but says that “the conditions [for it] may finally be in place… while Gaza re-development advances and when the PA [Palestinian authority] reform program is faithfully carried out.”

The State of Palestinian is currently supported by 157 out of the 193 members of the UN. However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said repeatedly that the Palestinian state “will never happen.”

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Israel launched its military operation in Gaza in response to a Hamas attack in which 1,200 people were killed and 250 others were taken hostage in October 2023. The scale of the Jewish State’s response, which has claimed more than 67,000 lives and left almost 170,000 wounded according to the local health authorities, has compelled a wellspring of support, increasing the number of states recognizing Palestine.