Russia sees US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's recent statement about the reversal of policy on Israeli settlements in the West Bank as another step aimed at undermining the legal base for resolving the Middle Eastern conflict, the Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 19th November, 2019) Russia sees US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's recent statement about the reversal of policy on Israeli settlements in the West Bank as another step aimed at undermining the legal base for resolving the Middle Eastern conflict, the Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday.
Pompeo announced on Monday that the United States rejected the stand of the previous administration and no longer found Jewish settlements established by Israel in the West Bank as inconsistent with international law.
"We see this decision of Washington as another step aimed at undermining the international legal base of the Middle Eastern settlement, which will promote aggravation of the already tense situation in the Palestinian-Israeli relations," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Russia remains committed to the UN Security Council's Resolution 2334 (2016), under which the Jewish settlements presence in the West Bank and East Jerusalem is illegal and also is an obstacle on the way to peace, the ministry stressed.
"We are calling insistently an all the parties involved to abstain from steps that may trigger new dangerous regional escalation and that prevent creating conditions for resuming direct Palestinian-Israeli negotiations," the Russian Foreign Ministry specified.
