Russia to hold consultations to resolve Gaza conflict

By Elena Teslova

MOSCOW (AA) - Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Friday that Moscow is planning consultations of key players in Moscow to harmonize their positions on resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Speaking at a news conference in Moscow, Zakharova told Anadolu that the process of organizing a meeting is underway.

She said Moscow does not have a "magic wand" to resolve the conflict in one fell swoop, but a solution is possible and demands hard work and honesty.

"International and regional efforts aimed at ending the war in Gaza are not yielding the necessary results due to the fact that a number of external players are acting on the basis of their own agenda ... These are the political games of a narrow group of elites," she stressed.

According to Zakharova, only a consolidated response from the world community based on the international legal basis will allow to counter acute challenges, threats, crises in various parts of the world.

"What is required is not competition, but a creative synthesis of various constructive ideas on an international legal basis," she said.

According to her, the US attempts to oust other players from the process of Palestinian-Israeli reconciliation, and that has "brought the situation to its current catastrophic state."

"We continue to raise the issue of creating an effective mediation mechanism for Middle East settlement, in which the states of the region would play an important role," she said.

Israel has pounded the Gaza Strip since a cross-border attack by the Palestinian group, Hamas, on Oct. 7, killing at least 23,210 Palestinians, and injuring 59,167 others, mostly women and children, according to health authorities.

Around 1,200 Israelis are believed to have been killed in the initial Hamas attack.

The Israeli onslaught has left Gaza in ruins, with 60% of the enclave’s infrastructure damaged or destroyed and nearly 2 million residents displaced amid acute shortages of food, clean water, and medicine.

A two-day hearing into South Africa's case of genocide against Israel in its war on Gaza ended on Friday.