Vietnam closely follows the situation in the Middle East and welcomes all efforts to restart the Middle East peace process, the foreign ministry's spokesperson Le Thi Thu Hang said on Friday.

She made the statement in response to reporters’ questions about Vietnam’s reaction to the United States’ Middle East peace plan unveiled by President Donald Trump on Tuesday.

“We hold that a fair and sustainable solution to this issue can only be reached through dialogue and negotiations between related parties on the basis of respect for international law and related resolutions of the United Nations,” Hang was quoted by the Vietnam News Agency as saying.

Trump's plan, unveiled alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, envisages a two-state solution with Israel and a future Palestinian state living alongside each other, but with strict conditions that Palestinians have balked at.

He proposed a demilitarized Palestinian state, with borders drawn to meet Israeli security needs, while granting U.S. recognition of Israeli settlements on occupied West Bank land and of Jerusalem as Israel's indivisible capital.

The last Israeli-Palestinian peace talks collapsed in 2014.

Enduring obstacles include the expansion of Israeli settlements on occupied land over decades, and generations of mutual suspicion.

In November, the United States reversed decades of policy when Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Washington no longer regarded Israeli settlements in the West Bank as a breach of international law.

Palestinians and most of the international community view the settlements as illegal under international law. Israel disputes that.

The past two decades have also seen the rise to power in Gaza of the armed Islamist movement Hamas, which is formally committed to Israel’s destruction and is in the midst of a decades-long power struggle with the Western-backed Palestinian Authority, headed by President Mahmoud Abbas.

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