While Moscow may have failed to reconcile Palestinians factions during a three-day-long meeting in the Russian capital that kicked off Feb. 11, it did manage to once again throw down the gauntlet on US plans in the Middle East. 

The event, which gathered delegations of 12 political movements from Palestine — including Fatah, Hamas and the Islamic Jihad Movement — was hosted by the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences for the third time. Two previous summits had taken place in 2011 and 2017.

Egypt has long “reserved” the subject of the Palestinian reconciliation as its own "area of responsibility.” Moscow does not question Cairo’s status; moreover, it wholeheartedly supports the North African country’s efforts to resolve the controversies, coming of the belief that cohesion inside Palestine is mandatory for the progress of its negotiations with Israel.

During the meeting, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov directly stated that Russia strives to see the Cairo agreement actually implemented. A source in the Russian Foreign Ministry who spoke with Al-Monitor not for attribution said back in December 2018 that the ministry considered the planned visit of the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh to Moscow to be “inappropriate” and insisted that the intra-Palestinian meeting should take place first. Nevertheless, Hamas representatives still hope that Haniyeh will arrive in Moscow in April or May — though Russia still hasn’t extended an official invitation. A lot depends on the progress of the intra-Palestinian dialogue itself.