Will Moscow save the West Bank from annexation?
The Palestinian leadership is looking to Russia for help resisting Israel's annexation plans.
Palestinian efforts against Israel's plans to annex Palestinian territory are being exercised on three levels. Locally, Palestinians have severed all relations, including security coordination, with Israel and the United States. Regionally, Jordan has been spearheading the Arab response to the Israeli plan, including efforts by the only two Arab countries that have a peace plan with Israel: Jordan and Egypt.
On the international level, Palestinian energy has been largely focused on three members of the Middle East Quartet — the European Union, the United Nations and Russia. The focus is on these three instead of the Quartet as a whole, according to Palestinian Ambassador in Moscow Abdel Hafiz Nofel, because the remaning member of the Quartet — the Americans — have repeatedly derailed attempts by the others within the framework of the Quartet to provide a unified international position.
The May 24 meeting of the Quartet failed to reach an agreement because of the insistence of the American representative that the only basis of any future talks must be the American vision. Avi Berkowitz, a special adviser to President Donald Trump, insinuated to the Jerusalem Post that the Trump vision is the only game in town.
The idea of an international conference held in Moscow was first suggested during the peace talks in Annapolis in 2007, but the idea hit a wall since. However, Palestinians' stubborn refusal to deal with the American plan, President Mahmoud Abbas’ refusal to engage in any negotiating process sponsored only by the Americans and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s refusal to meet have all derailed efforts to have a Moscow peace conference.
