Russia’s Ambassador to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya, has leveled sharp criticism at Israel and the US in the course of a debate on the Middle East peace process at the UN Security Council, TASS reported on Wednesday. Nebenzya claimed both countries were ignoring the “Palestinian problem.”
Nebenzya warned that in the absence of a peace process on the political horizon in the region, a dangerously explosive potential was accumulating which could produce an explosion at any moment.
Of course, no such explosion could be expected without the support of Russia and its allies Iran and Qatar, as Israel’s UN ambassador Danny Danon suggested when he described Iran’s terror network and its efforts to destabilize the region.
Nabenzya rebuked Danon and US Envoy Nikki Haley for concentrating on the Iranian threat, saying, “Russia is openly concerned by the fact the Israeli and US delegations didn’t even utter the word ‘Palestine.’ This is alarming and saddening because we don’t see any progress whatsoever in the field of an Israeli-Palestinian settlement and, more than that, we don’t see even references to it – something that doesn’t inspire optimism by any means.”
The Russian ambassador insisted that turbulent events in the Middle East and North Africa “shouldn’t overshadow the priority of solution of the Palestinian problem that has a fundamental influence over long-term normalization in the region.”
Nebenzya then reminded both the US and Israel of Russia’s proposal to host a summit of Israeli and PA state leaders – which was, most likely, the point of the entire exercise.