Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas about rioting in Jerusalem's Old City.
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In a phone call Monday, they talked about "the problems of the Middle East settlement in the context of escalating tensions in the West Bank and East Jerusalem," the Kremlin said.
Last Friday, at least 152 Palestinians were wounded in clashes with Israeli riot police inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound.
Putin emphasized the Russian position of support for the Palestinians and said Moscow would continue to offer diplomatic support for the Palestinian issue in international forums. The Russian leader rejected what he referred to as Israeli activity that prevents worshippers from arriving at Al-Aqsa Mosque freely and emphasized the need to respect the status quo at the holy site.
The Russian president further said Russia would make every effort to resolve the crisis in Ukraine through negotiations.
For his part, Abbas updated Putin on recent developments in the region and Jerusalem in particular. He spoke of "daily invasions" of Al-Aqsa by radical settlers under the protection of Israeli occupation forces, which he said behaved barbarically toward worshippers in a clear violation of international law and the status quo."
The conversation between the PA and Russian presidents comes as relations between Jerusalem and Moscow remain tense.
Earlier this month, Israel voted to suspend Russia from the UN Human Rights Council, and following the discovery of mass graves in the suburbs of Kyiv, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid and Prime Minister-designate Yair Lapid said, "Russian soldiers carried out war crimes" in Ukraine.
Russian officials blasted the move in a statement, saying, "There is an effort to take advantage of the situation in Ukraine to distract international opinion from one of the longest and unresolved conflicts – the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."
The Kremlin later said Israel was carrying out the "illegal occupation and annexation of Palestinian territories.
"The longest occupation since World War II is being carried out with the tacit approval of leading countries in the West and the stated support of the US," the Kremlin said.
Russia accused Israel of imposing harsh restrictions on the Gaza Strip, which it said had turned the terrorist enclave into an "open-air prison" in which 2 million people are forced to survive for 14 years under conditions of aerial, land, and marine blockade."
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