Russian President Putin and PA Chairman Abbas
Russian President Putin and PA Chairman AbbasReuters

Russia announced on Sunday that it will back Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s plan to ask the United Nations to impose a deadline for Israel to withdraw from Judea and Samaria.

“I cannot see any reasons to cavil about this text, or about the Palestinian people’s wish to say once again ‘let’s have a look at this situation, in the UN framework,’” Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said, according to the RIA Novosti news agency.

“So we say [to the Palestinians], if you find one option or another suitable, then we will support you as friends. You know better what you need and how to achieve it. We think that the Palestinian case is fair, meaning that people have a right to self-determination, up to establishing their state,” Bogdanov told journalists, according to the report.

Abbas’s move, which he plans to carry out through a resolution at the UN Security Council, is a unilateral move which is in direct violation of the Oslo Accords.

The draft resolution will reportedly call for Israel to “end the occupation” by November of 2016.

Its key provision calls for "the full withdrawal of Israel, the occupying power, from all of the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, as rapidly as possible and to be fully completed within a specified timeframe, not to exceed November 2016, and the achievement of the independence and sovereignty of the state of Palestine and the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people."

In 2012, the PA unilaterally turned to the United Nations and received recognition as a non-member observer state by the General Assembly.

Since then, the PA has threatened several times that if peace talks fail, it would turn to international institutions and seek to sue Israel in the International Criminal Court.