Proper negotiation is necessary to provide for the creation of an independent Palestinian state, Russia says MOSCOW: Arab League Chief Ahmed Aboul Gheit headed to Moscow on Sunday for talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on the situation in Gaza after Hamas launched the most significant attack on Israel in years. Aboul Gheit, who served as Egypt’s foreign minister during the final seven years of Hosni Mubarak’s rule, will discuss the “ongoing escalation in the Gaza Strip,” said a spokesman for the Cairo-based league of Arab states. After violence flared on Saturday, Russia expressed grave concern, calling on both Palestinian and Israeli sides to cease violence and blamed the West for blocking the Middle East Quartet. Moscow said that a proper negotiation was necessary to provide for the creation of an independent Palestinian state within the borders of 1967 with a capital in East Jerusalem. “We regard the current large-scale escalation as another extremely dangerous manifestation of a vicious circle of violence resulting from chronic failure to comply with the corresponding resolutions of the UN and its Security Council and the blocking by the West of the work of the Middle East Quartet of international mediators made up of Russia, the US, the EU and the UN,” Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged diplomatic efforts in the Middle East in order to prevent wider conflict, saying that “only through negotiation leading to a two-state solution can peace be achieved.” The UN’s human rights chief Volker Turk said: “I call for an immediate stop to the violence, and appeal to all sides and key countries in the region to de-escalate to avoid further bloodshed.” The German government said it was reviewing its hundreds of millions of dollars of aid for Palestinians. Development Minister Svenja Schulze said the government had always been careful to check that the money was only used for peaceful ends. “But these attacks on Israel mark a terrible fracture,” she said. “We will now review our entire engagement for the Palestinian territories.” Germany would discuss with Israel how development projects in the region could best be served, and coordinate with international partners, said the minister for German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s center-left government. Some German lawmakers, from the opposition conservatives in particular, called for an end to the aid. “All of Europe, all 27 states, must now say: We need a new start, and we will no longer finance terrorists,” said Armin Laschet, chancellor candidate for the conservatives at the last federal election, calling for an end to EU cooperation with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who is based in the West Bank. Gregor Gysi, a prominent member of the opposition Left party, argued against such a move, saying Hamas, and not all Palestinians, were responsible for the attack.