Russia to Initiate Contacts on Palestinian-Israeli Settlement During Its BRICS Presidency: Putin

"The death of thousands of people [in the Gaza Strip], mass displacements of civilian population and the humanitarian catastrophe that has broken out cause great concern," Putin said.

"Participation of colleagues from the Middle East in today's meeting, who have received the invitation to be full members of BRICS this year, is especially important. I want to use the moment to note their efforts on the normalization of the situation, and in particular I mean the peace summit in Egypt and the extraordinary Islamic summit in Saudi Arabia," Putin added.

"I would like to emphasize that such humanitarian pauses, or better, of course, a full-fledged ceasefire, are necessary to continue efforts to release hostages and evacuate civilians and foreign citizens from the Gaza Strip," Putin said at the BRICS summit.

"Because of the sabotage of the UN decisions, which clearly provide for the creation and peaceful coexistence of two independent and sovereign states, Israel and Palestine, more than one generation of Palestinians has been brought up in an atmosphere of injustice shown to their people. And the Israelis cannot fully guarantee the security of their state," he said, highlighting that a long-term Palestinian-Israeli truce is the main task at the moment.

"The new format of emergency online meetings of leaders, proposed by President [of South Africa Cyril] Ramaphosa seems very promising. Moreover, this concerns not only the Middle East settlement, but also other topical issues on the global and regional agenda," Putin told the extraordinary summit.

"We consider it extremely useful to continue the discussion within the framework of BRICS on the further development of the Palestinian-Israeli confrontation. If there are no objections, dear colleagues, then during the upcoming Russian presidency in the association next year, we will initiate possible contacts, including via video link, on this issue," the president said.