| Posted By Emma Sabry October 2, 2008 "The Middle East Quartet is failing -- making inadequate progress toward improving the lives of Palestinians (and not) improving the prospects for peace," a coalition of 21 aid agencies and human rights organizations said in a damning report on Thursday. Since the Quartet includes most of the world's rich and powerful countries – the U.S., UN, EU and Russia – the report’s criticism makes you wonder what exactly they have been doing to bring peace to the Middle East. The aid agencies’ report was issued just before the Quartet meets in New York on Friday to discuss the peace process. It says the meeting would take place at "a critical moment for the quartet to demonstrate that it can play an effective role in bringing peace to the Middle East." "Unless there is a swift and dramatic improvement, it will be necessary to question what the future is for the Middle East Quartet," it said, according to Reuters. Quartet members have signalled their opposition to the expansion of Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories 18 separate times, the report says. Yet there had been an acceleration in settlement construction and no serious attempts by the Israeli authorities to dismantle outposts, which are illegal under international law and are “taking a drastic toll on Palestinian daily life”. The agencies also said that the Quartet had failed to secure the removal of Israeli checkpoints and other obstacles that would allow Palestinians to see a tangible improvement in their daily lives. "There is no 'new reality' in the West Bank: The economy continues to stagnate and the blockade of Gaza continues," the report said. Of course the Israelis would slam the report because it does not accept Israel's argument that many of its actions are justified on “security grounds.” But the report’s authors argue instead that squeezing the Palestinians in the way that they have been squeezed is bad for peace. They added that the "visible progress on the ground" demanded by the Quartet when it met in Berlin in June had not materialized. On five of the Quartet's 10 objectives, there had been no change or a "marked deterioration," they said, adding that the Quartet’s failure to remove the severe restrictions on the free movement of Palestinians "may also constitute a fatal threat to the broader peace process". So why has the Quartet not managed to match its deeds with its own words? According to an article on the BBC, the answer to that question has to do with the failure of the U.S. policy towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The U.S. President George W. Bush launched Israeli-Palestinian peace talks at Annapolis, near Washington, last November, seeking an agreement on the establishment of a Palestinian state before he leaves office next January. The aid agencies say the deadline seemed unlikely to be met. Moreover, Condoleezza Rice, speaking as the U.S. Secretary of State and not as a Quartet member, has expressed concern about the growth of Jewish settlements several times. But Israel has ignored her messages. The Israelis know that what matters most is the attitude of President Bush, who has never pressured Israel to fulfil its commitments. At the same time, U.S. pressure on the Palestinians is easy and that’s why it happens a lot, but it also doesn’t work. Many analysts believe that the U.S. policy fails because it is not even-handed. They argue that this imbalance transmits itself to the Quartet. Like any international grouping, the Quartet is as strong, or as weak, as the collective political will of its members. Despite its shortcomings, the aid agencies’ report recognises that the Quartet is good at raising money for a variety of projects, mainly economic. However, the say that this had not yet improved the lives of the Palestinians. It might seem that the Quartet is a useless organization and that it will take more than a new American president to change that. But some diplomats who also criticise the Quartet's political performance consider that as an institution it is worth keeping, because the presence of the UN, the EU and Russia stops the business of Middle East peacemaking being simply a private department of U.S. foreign policy. | 
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