China’s Special Envoy to the Middle East, Zhai Jun, had a meeting with the diplomatic envoys of the Arab countries, at their request, to discuss the increasing violence on the West Bank. Speaking at the daily Foreign Ministry briefing in Beijing, spokeswoman Mao Ning said, “Zhai Jun said that the pressing task now is to keep the situation under control. China urges relevant parties, Israel in particular, to stay calm and exercise restraint to the greatest extent, avoid taking any actions that may heighten tensions and prevent further escalation of the situation. China has actively responded to the call of Arab states, and asked the UN Security Council to hold emergency consultations on the Israel-Palestine situation, together with countries including the UAE making active efforts for de-escalation. We stay in close communication with relevant parties in the international community to facilitate peace talks.” Mao urged “major countries with influence” to step up in facilitating peace talks based on the commitment to a two-states solution, with an independent Palestine.
At the same time, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, speaking at a press conference in Ankara, after his meeting with his Turkish counterpart, Mevlut Covusoglu, called for resuming multilateral negotiations for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. “We have long been advocating to resume the multilateral process for the Israeli-Palestinian settlement, as there is a universally recognized collective mediator, which is the Quartet comprising Russia, the United States, the European Union and the United Nations,” he said. “It is in this very framework, with the mandatory involvement of the Arab League, that we can, in practice and with hope for some kind of result, search for agreements that should be based on the principles of the two-state solution, as they are formulated in documents.”
