The complex, nuanced issue of Russia’s geopolitical neutrality in the Israel-Palestine tragedy was finally clarified last week, in no uncertain terms.
Exhibit A is Russian President Vladimir Putin addressing – in person, on 30 October – his country’s Security Council, top government officials, and heads of security agencies.
Among other notables, his audience included Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, Speaker of the Duma Vyacheslav Volodin; Secretary of the Security Council Nikolai Patrushev, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, FSB Director Alexander Bortnikov; and Director of SVR (foreign intel) Sergei Narishkin.
Putin took no time to cut to the chase detailing the official stand of the Russian Federation in the current geopolitical incandescence of two intertwined wars, Ukraine and Israel-Palestine. This was addressed as much to his high-profile audience as to the political leadership of the western Hegemon.”
“There is no justification for the terrible events taking place in Gaza now, where hundreds of thousands of innocent people are being killed indiscriminately, without having anywhere to flee or hide from the bombing. When you see blood-stained children, dead children, the suffering of women and old people, when you see medics killed, of course, it makes you clench your fists as tears well in your eyes.”
The US-led coalition of chaos
Then came a preview of the context: “We must clearly understand who in reality is behind the tragedy of peoples in the Middle East and in other regions around the world, who has been organizing this lethal chaos and who benefits from it.”
In no uncertain terms, Putin described “the current ruling elites in the United States and its satellites” as “the main beneficiaries of the global instability that they use to extract their bloody rent. Their strategy is also clear. The United States as a global superpower is becoming weaker and is losing its position, and everyone sees and understands this, even judging by the trends in the world economy.”
The Russian president made a direct connection between the American drive to extend “its global dictatorship” and the policy obsession with promoting non-stop chaos: “This chaos will help it contain and destabilize its rivals or, as they put it, their geopolitical opponents, among which they also rank our country, which in reality are new global growth centers and sovereign independent countries who are unwilling to kowtow and play the role of servants.”
Crucially, Putin made a point to “repeat again” to both his internal and Global South audiences that, “the ruling elites of the United States and its satellites are behind the tragedy of the Palestinians, the massacre in the Middle East in general, the conflict in Ukraine, and many other conflicts in the world – in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and so on.”
It is a vitally important point. By conflating the perpetrators of the Ukraine conflict and the war on Gaza – “the United States and its satellites” – the Russian president has effectively lumped Israel in with the western Hegemon and its agenda of “chaos.”
Moscow aligns with the real ‘international community’
Essentially, what this tells us is that the Russian Federation unequivocally aligns itself with the overwhelming majority of Global South/Global Majority public opinion – from the Arab world to all the lands of Islam and beyond, in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
Interestingly, Moscow aligns with the analyses by Iranian Leader Ayatollah Khamenei – a strategic partner of Russia – and Hezbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah, in his searing, sophisticated, Sun-Tzu tinged address this past Friday, on “the spider that is trying to entangle the entire planet and the whole world in its cobweb.”
Exhibit B on Russia’s official position, specifically on Israel-Palestine, came from Russia’s permanent representative to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya, at a special UN General Assembly session on Palestine two days after Putin’s address.
Nebenzya made it abundantly clear that Israel, as an occupying power, does not have “the right for self-defense” – a fact supported by a UN International Court consultative ruling way back in 2004.
At the time, the court also established, in a 14 out of 15 judicial vote, that Israel’s construction of a massive wall in occupied Palestine, including East Jerusalem, was against international law.
Nebenzya, in legal terms, nullified the endlessly evoked “right to self-defense” argument brandished by Tel Aviv and the whole NATO galaxy. The Hegemon, Tel Aviv’s protector, recently vetoed Brazil’s draft humanitarian UN Security Council just because it did not mention Israel’s “right to self-defense.”
Even as he underscored that Moscow does recognize Israel’s right to ensure its security, Nebenzya stressed this right “could be fully guaranteed only in case of a fair resolution of the Palestinian problem based on recognized UN Security Council resolutions.”
The record shows that Israel does not respect any UN Security Council resolution on Palestine.
Lavrov’s priorities in occupied-Palestine
Exhibit C on Russia’s stand regarding Israel/Palestine was provided by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in a press conference with Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sabah Al-Sabah, two days after Nebenzya’s intervention at the UN.
Lavrov reiterated Moscow’s priorities already stressed by Putin and Nebenzya: an urgent ceasefire, humanitarian corridors, and a return to the table to negotiate “an independent Palestinian state, as envisaged by the UN Security Council within the 1967 borders, which would coexist in peace and security with Israel.”
Lavrov stressed once again that several US-Israeli diversionary tactics are being employed “aimed at delaying (if not burying) the UN Security Council’s decision to establish a Palestinian state.”
This, says the Russian foreign minister, implies condemning the Palestinians “to an eternal existence without rights. This will ensure neither peace nor security in the region, it will only drive the conflict deeper. And you won’t be able to drive it deep. The next ‘grapes of wrath’ will be sown, which will quickly ‘sprout.’”
Lavrov’s analysis, as much as Putin’s, converges with Khamenei’s and Nasrallah’s: “This is not about Gaza, but about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The State of Palestine is an integral part of that solution.”
Russia is sowing the seeds to exercise the role of trusted mediator for all parties in Israel/Palestine – a role totally unsuitable for the Hegemon, especially after the tacit approval of the current Israeli ethnic cleansing of Gaza.
It’s all here, clearly formulated by Lavrov: “It will be fundamentally important for us to know the unanimous opinion of the Arab world.” That is a message specifically targeting Sunni regimes vassalized by Washington. Then, when they get their act together, “we will support the Arab solution to this very difficult issue.”
Multipolarity’s prerequisite: Peace in Palestine
Examined together, Exhibits A, B, and C show how Moscow is way ahead of the game. The overall message – which is being minutely decoded all across the Global South/Global Majority – is that even considering non-stop Empire of Chaos gambits, the immutable, exclusionist Zionist Project is now dead on arrival.
The least bad solution so far is the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative – subscribed by everyone from the lands of Islam to Russia, Iran, and China: an independent Palestinian state, back to the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital.
The problem is how to convince out-of-control Zionism to back off. Imperative facts on the ground would have to include severing the Washington-Tel Aviv weaponized/securitized umbilical cord – and expelling from the geopolitical spectrum the neocon Christian Zionist matrix in the US, which happens to be deeply entrenched in silos across the Deep State.
Both of these imperatives are impossibilities – in short, medium, and even long term.
Meanwhile, a simple look at the map shows that for all practical purposes, the two-state solution – from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip – is dead. It may be heart-wrenching for the leaders of multipolarity to admit it. It will take some time, and shifting of public discourse, to recognize that the only viable solution is supreme anathema for the Zionist Project: a one-state with Jews and Arabs living together in peace.
All that brings us to a stark formulation: without a just solution for Palestine, tangible peace across the emerging multipolarity spectrum remains unattainable. The current enabled horror in Gaza shows that peace continues not to be a priority for the Empire of Chaos, and it will take a Russia – with perhaps a China – to shift the game.
By Pepe Escobar