MOSCOW: Hamas wants Russia to push Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to begin negotiations on a national unity government for post-conflict Gaza, a senior Hamas official told the RIA state news agency after talks in Moscow.

Mousa Abu Marzouk, a Hamas politburo member, met Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov in Moscow. “We discussed issues related to Palestinian national unity and the creation of a government that should govern the Gaza Strip after the war,” Marzouk was quoted as saying by RIA.

Marzouk said that Hamas had asked Russia to encourage Abbas, who is attending the BRICS summit in Kazan, to start negotiations about a unity government, RIA reported.

Putin met Abbas at the summit in Russia. “We are strongly for a quick end to the bloodshed (in Gaza),” Putin told Abbas in televised comments, in the pair’s second meeting since August.

The Palestinian authority was set up three decades ago under the interim peace agreement known as the Oslo Accords and exercises limited governance over parts of the occupied West Bank, which Palestinians want as the core of a future independent state.

Flames of war

Putin told BRICS leaders on Thursday that the Middle East was on the brink of a full-scale war after a sharp rise in tension between Israel and Iran, though the Kremlin chief also faced calls to end the war in Ukraine.

The BRICS summit, attended by more than 20 leaders including Chinese President Xi Jinping, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Turkiye’s Tayyip Erdogan, has shown the depth of Russia’s relations beyond the Western world.

“The degree of confrontation between Israel and Iran has sharply increased. All this resembles a chain reaction and puts the entire Middle East on the brink of a full-scale war,” Putin, sitting beside Chinese President Xi Jinping, said.

Xi, speaking after Putin, said that China wanted a political settlement in Ukraine, and suggested joint efforts by Beijing and Brasilia offered the best chance of peace. “We need to work for an early de-escalation of the situation and pave the way for a political settlement,” Xi said.

On the Middle East, Xi said that there should be a comprehensive ceasefire Gaza, a halt to the spread of war in Lebanon and a return to the two-state solution under which states for both Israel and Palestine would be established.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian criticised international organisations, particularly the United Nations, for failing to end the conflict. “The flames of war continue to rage in the Gaza Strip and cities of Lebanon, and international institutions, particularly the UN Security Council as a driver of international peace and security, lack the necessary effectiveness to extinguish the fire of this crisis,” Pezeshkian told the BRICS.

United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres, who was criticised by Kyiv for attending the meeting in Russia, said peace was needed in Gaza, Lebanon, Sudan and Ukraine.

“We need peace in Ukraine,” Guterres told the BRICS+mee­­ting that was chaired by Putin. “A just peace in line with the UN Charter, international law and UN General Assembly resolutions.” Putin also said that unless Palestinians got their state, they would feel the burden of “historical injustice” and the region would remain in “an atmosphere of permanent crisis with inevitable relapses of large-scale violence.”

BRICS leaders in their summit declaration called for the establishment of a sovereign, independent and viable Palestinian state within the borders of 1967.

Published in Dawn, October 25th, 2024