UN, January 24. /TASS/. The decisions taken by the UN on establishing the State of Palestine should not be buried as was the case with the Minsk agreements, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at an open debate of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) on the Middle East.

"I should stress a critical issue. We have no right to allow burying the UN’s decisions on establishing the State of Palestine as the Minsk agreements of 2015 unanimously approved by this Council were buried," he said. "It is necessary to prevent such crimes against the Palestinian people as well," the minister stressed.

The situation in the Middle East escalated sharply on October 7 of last year after militants from the Gaza Strip-based radical Palestinian movement Hamas staged surprise incursions from Gaza into borderline Israeli communities, killing residents of Israeli kibbutzim and taking more than 240 people as hostages, including children, women and the elderly. The radicals described the attack as a response to the aggressive actions of the Israeli authorities against the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City. Israel announced a complete blockade of Gaza and launched retaliatory strikes and a ground military operation against Hamas in the Palestinian enclave as well as strikes on parts of Lebanon and Syria. Clashes have also been reported in the West Bank.