On Tuesday, February 13, the 13th Middle East Conference of the Valdai Club and the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences began in Moscow. This year, about 50 foreign and Russian experts and active political figures from 16 countries are taking part.
Opening the conference, Vitaly Naumkin, Academic Director of the Institute of Oriental Studies, noted that today the thesis about the centrality of the Palestinian problem in establishing peace in the Middle East, which Russia has been promoting for years, is not in doubt by anyone. In turn, Andrey Bystritskiy, Chairman of the Board of the Foundation for Development and Support of the Valdai Discussion Club, emphasised that the problems of the region are so multidimensional and diverse that it provides the best testing ground for working out settlement mechanisms, which will allow analysts to develop a theory of how relations between countries must be built in the future.
Mohammad Reza Dehshiri, Dean of the School of International Relations at the Iranian Foreign Ministry, harshly criticised Israel's actions in the Gaza Strip. According to him, Israel poses an existential threat to the entire region and to the settlement of the Palestinian issue. This threat is aggravated by external interference in the affairs of the Middle East, primarily the United States, which continues to provide military assistance to Israel. At the same time, international organisations and liberal democracies act as third-party observers of the killing of Palestinians. Dehshiri advocated cooperation between countries in the region to resolve the Palestinian crisis. A platform for ensuring regional security and establishing peace in the Middle East could be created by Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, he believes.
Ahmad Majdalani, Palestine’s Minister of Social Development and Member of the PLO Executive Committee, said that during the current war, the Arab and American plan to include Israel in the security system of the Middle East has failed. Doing so will prove to be impossible without solving the Palestinian problem, but the United States and European countries do not have a serious plan for a ceasefire. In fact, they are waging a war of aggression against the Palestinian people, he is convinced.
According to Nabil Fahmy, Dean Emeritus at the School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the American University in Cairo, the current situation in Palestine contradicts the very idea of security: a spiral of violence leads to an embittered people who will want to take revenge for crimes committed against them. It is necessary to find a rational solution based on the rule of law, the Egyptian diplomat believes. Measures for a peaceful settlement should include a cessation of hostilities, the release of hostages, recognition of a Palestinian state, the restoration of the Gaza Strip, and elections in Israel and Palestine, he said.
The thesis that a large-scale settlement in the Middle East is impossible without solving the Palestinian problem was also voiced by Saleh AlKhathlan, Senior Advisor at the Gulf Research Center. According to him, the root cause of the current events is the worldview of the Israelis, who do not allow peace with the Palestinians.
According to Taha Özhan, Research Director at the Ankara Institute, Western policy in the Middle East aims to perpetuate the status quo by using Israel, and one of its results is that the regional order in the Middle East is built around Israel and it is dangerous for other players. Only the implementation of the legitimate rights of the peoples living in this region will help the settlement, Özhan emphasised.
After the first session, the conference participants met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. The aggravation of the crisis in the Middle East region has not yet reached its limit, the top Russian diplomat noted. “We are seeing the consequences of the current escalation in other parts of the region, including the West Bank of the Jordan River, where military operations are also being carried out,” he said. “But even outside the Palestinian territories, missile and bomb attacks are carried out on the territory of Syria and Iraq, and American bases in Syria, Iraq and Jordan are shelled. Of course, the situation in the Red Sea has sharply worsened and the situation around Yemen has worsened, which has become another target of illegitimate, aggressive air strikes from the United States and Britain.” At the same time, Washington intends to exclude Moscow from international efforts to resolve problems in the Middle East, Lavrov emphasized. He added that in the current situation, the United States is imposing “its own recipes, divorced from reality, one-sided decisions that do not take into account the specifics of either countries or regions.” According to the minister, the initiative to resolve the Palestinian crisis must grow through the Arab consensus. Russia proposed to include the Arab League into the Middle East “quartet”, making it a “quintet”. Today there is no doubt that the peace process is impossible without the central role of Arab states, Lavrov noted, but the Americans continue to believe that only they should be in charge of it.
The second session of the conference was devoted to the echoes of colonial policy in the Middle East. According to Yahia Zoubir, Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs in Qatar, colonialism continues to fuel conflicts. Nevertheless, the countries of the Global South are trying to reduce their dependence, as they want to play a larger role on the world stage. There is a belief in the Middle East that the West has no right to dictate its terms in the region. “In Europe you are forced to protest against Russia, but not to notice the death of many people in Palestine. The situation in the Maghreb and Western Sahara does not make it into the media. These are double standards. This is the real face of the West, which wants to dominate,” he said.
Çağrı Erhan, the rector of Altinbaş University in Turkey, recalled that the very concept of the “Middle East” is a product of Western colonial perceptions and was imposed on the inhabitants of the region. In turn, Anwar Abdulhadi, director of the PLO's political department, said that the old imperialism has disappeared, but has left as its legacy a new imperialism, which is embodied in Israel and its policies. The question of how ready the countries of the Middle East are to overcome the post-colonial mentality was raised by Nikolay Surkov, senior researcher at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at IMEMO RAS. “The Middle East has always needed an empire to maintain order,” he noted. The Ottoman Empire, French domination, American influence. What will happen after the role of the United States diminishes?” Today, Western powers are weakening, and alternative centres of military and technological power are emerging in the Middle East. But will the countries of the region take advantage of the opening window of opportunity? This question remains open for now.
A manifestation of neocolonialism is Israel's injustice towards the Palestinians, said Daniel Levy, president of the U.S./Middle East Project (USMEP). At the same time, he sharply criticized the Palestinian authorities, calling them “bantustan managers”. Technocrats, he said, cannot engage in the national struggle for liberation.
The final session of the first day of the conference was entirely devoted to the Palestinian issue. Hirak J. Das, Senior Research Associate at the Vivekananda International Foundation, noted that after years of denial, there has been an acceptance that Palestine should become a state within its 1967 borders. But internally, Palestine is extremely unstable: both HAMAS and Fatah are experiencing a crisis of legitimacy, demonstrating both the strength and weakness of the Palestinian people. At the same time, Israel is doing everything to undermine the implementation of the two-state solution, the Indian analyst emphasised.
According to Amal Abou Zeid, Advisor to Former Lebanese President General Michel Aoun (2016 – 2022), the war in the Gaza Strip has provoked radical changes in the region and suspended the normalisation of relations between Israel and Arab countries. Economic priorities ceded to political ones. There is a prioritisation of resolving the Palestinian issue. Abou Zeid called for Israel to reconsider its approach and support a two-state solution to the Palestinian problem.
In turn, Zaid Eyadat, Director of the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan, pointed out the lack of viability of the Palestinian state in its current form. The danger, he said, lies in the fact that the Palestinians are being offered the creation of a quasi-state on a very small territory. At the same time, it is obvious that the Palestinian issue cannot be resolved within the framework of one state. It is necessary to search for new options that certainly take into account the Palestinians’ right to self-determination, Eyadat concluded.
