US can lever­age Rus­sian-held assets for Gaza’s recon­struc­tion

IN RECENT days there has been a lot of dis­cus­sion about the idea of US Pres­id­ent Don­ald Trump estab­lish­ing the Board of Peace as part of a broader ini­ti­at­ive to address global con­flicts, par­tic­u­larly focus­ing on the recon­struc­tion of Gaza fol­low­ing the Israel-Hamas con­flict.

Among other world lead­ers, an invit­a­tion to join the Board was exten­ded to the pres­id­ent of Rus­sia, Vladi­mir Putin.

Not being able to fully rely upon the accur­acy of the West­ern news agen­cies, I deem it neces­sary to share the fol­low­ing first-hand inform­a­tion with the read­ers of the Cape Times, espe­cially given the fact that so many South Afric­ans take the cur­rent devel­op­ments in the Gaza Strip and Palestine so close to their hearts.

Rus­sia’s approach to the issues of Palestine and the set­tle­ment in the Middle East is prin­cipled and con­sist­ent. We believe that only the estab­lish­ment and full func­tion­ing of the Palestinian state can lead to a last­ing set­tle­ment of the Middle East con­flict.

Last week, at a meet­ing with Palestinian leader Mah­moud Abbas, Vladi­mir Putin said that Moscow is will­ing to provide $1 bil­lion to this new body, the Board of Peace, primar­ily to sup­port the Palestinian people, assist in the res­tor­a­tion of the Gaza Strip, and address the gen­eral res­ol­u­tion of prob­lems facing Palestine using the funds that were frozen in the US by the former admin­is­tra­tion.

At the same time, the state­ment by the Rus­sian pres­id­ent brings to the front the issue of the Rus­sian assets unlaw­fully blocked by West­ern coun­tries that goes far bey­ond dis­agree­ments between Moscow and the West. It dir­ectly raises ques­tions about the resi­li­ence and long-term pro­spects of the global fin­an­cial sys­tem.

For the coun­tries of the Global South, the cur­rent situ­ation touches upon even more fun­da­mental issues – sov­er­eignty, equal­ity of states, and the sus­tain­ab­il­ity of the inter­na­tional eco­nomic order. Rus­sia con­sist­ently pro­ceeds from the premise that the frozen assets remain its law­ful prop­erty.

Com­ment­ing on this issue, Pres­id­ent Putin has expli­citly said that these funds belong to Rus­sia, and that any decisions regard­ing their use can be taken exclus­ively by their owner.

This pos­i­tion has been fur­ther elab­or­ated by his press sec­ret­ary, Dmitry Peskov, who stressed that dis­cus­sions about the pos­sible alloc­a­tion of funds for peace­keep­ing pur­poses do not imply recog­ni­tion of the leg­al­ity of their freez­ing.

Thus, Moscow is not mak­ing con­ces­sions under pres­sure. Rather, it is emphas­ising its sov­er­eign right to make use of the assets that belong to the coun­try. At the same time, Rus­sia does not reject the very idea of col­lect­ive efforts to main­tain peace and secur­ity.

On the con­trary, the Min­istry of For­eign Affairs of Rus­sia has repeatedly declared its read­i­ness for equal and respect­ful dia­logue and for par­ti­cip­a­tion in mul­ti­lat­eral formats, provided that they are not used as instru­ments of polit­ical pres­sure.

Rus­sia’s pos­i­tion is based on the prin­ciple that peace ini­ti­at­ives must not be trans­formed into mech­an­isms for redis­trib­ut­ing resources in favour of a nar­row group of states or into tools of polit­ical coer­cion against any par­tic­u­lar act­ors in inter­na­tional rela­tions.

Under­min­ing the prin­ciple of the invi­ol­ab­il­ity of sov­er­eign assets inev­it­ably encour­ages the search for altern­at­ive mech­an­isms of set­tle­ment, fin­an­cing, and coordin­a­tion – a pro­cess that is already act­ively under way within the frame­work of cooper­a­tion among the coun­tries of the Global South.

Thus, the dis­cus­sion of Rus­sia’s par­ti­cip­a­tion in the Board of Peace and the pos­sible fin­an­cing of such par­ti­cip­a­tion through frozen assets becomes part of a much broader debate about the future of the inter­na­tional order.

Rus­sia’s Min­istry of For­eign Affairs has been instruc­ted to exam­ine the doc­u­ments that have been sub­mit­ted to us and to con­sult with our stra­tegic part­ners.

As Pres­id­ent Putin stated on the issue of Rus­sia’s par­ti­cip­a­tion in the Board of Peace, only after that will we be able to give a response to the invit­a­tion that has been con­veyed to us.

As of Janu­ary 26, accord­ing to Peskov, there has been no pub­lic reac­tion from Wash­ing­ton on this issue. At the same time, we firmly believe that the ini­ti­at­ive put for­ward by Pres­id­ent Putin opens new aven­ues for engage­ment.

The above-men­tioned pro­posal can really make a dif­fer­ence in a dire situ­ation where, accord­ing to Abbas, the num­ber of those killed and wounded in the Gaza Strip has reached 260 000. There are thou­sands and thou­sands more wounded in the West Bank. The scale and extent of the destruc­tion are cata­strophic.