MOSCOW, February 13. /TASS/. The rapid deterioration of the Middle East crisis has not yet reached its high, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.
"We see the consequences of the current escalation in other parts of the region, including in the West Bank, where force operations are also conducted and casualties are reported. But missile strikes are delivered beyond Palestinian territories, on Syria, Iraq. American bases in Syria, Iraq, Jordan come under shelling," he said at the 13th Middle East Conference of the Valdai Discussion Club. "The situation in the Red Sea has worsened dramatically, as has the situation around Yemen, which has become a target for illegitimate and aggressive strikes by US and British aircraft. It looks like this regional situation has not yet hit the bottom, regrettably."
"We have repeatedly warned that the chronic, decades-long unsettled Palestinian problem, the inability to establish of a full-fledged, viable Palestinian state in conformity with the United Nations resolutions is a main factor that will generate instability and violence in the Middle East," he added.
Tensions flared up again in the Middle East on October 7 after militants from the Gaza Strip-based radical Palestinian group Hamas launched a surprise incursion on Israeli territory, killing many Israeli kibbutz residents living near the Gaza border and abducting more than 240 Israelis, including women, children and the elderly. Hamas described its attack as a response to Israeli authorities’ aggressive actions against the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City. Israel declared a total blockade of the Gaza Strip and launched bombardments of the enclave and some areas in Lebanon and Syria, as well as a ground operation against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Clashes are also reported in the West Bank.
On January 12, US and British aircraft, ships and submarines for the first time attacked targets belonging to the Ansar Allah movement in a number of Yemeni cities, including Sana’a and Hodeidah. US President Joe Biden claimed that the attack came in direct response to unprecedented Houthi attacks in the Red Sea. The US administration said that the strikes targeted the launch sites of rockets and unmanned aerial vehicles, as well as radar stations belonging to the Houthi rebels. Since then, the United States has been regularly striking Houthi missile launchers in Yemen and Washington warns that it would continue to use military instruments of pressure on the Houthi.