Envoy says UN should consider leaving Quartet

Ian Black, Middle East editor, The Guardian, 16.10.07. "Every time I visit, the situation seems to have worsened," John Dugard, the UN's special rapporteur on the rights of the Palestinians, said in a BBC Radio interview. "This time, I was very struck by the sense of hopelessness among the Palestinian people." Mr Dugard attributed this to "the crushing effect of human rights violations", and to Israeli restrictions on Palestinians' freedom of movement. Israel did face a security threat but "its response is very disproportionate". He said the purpose of some of the hundreds of Israeli checkpoints or barriers in the West Bank was to break it up "into a number of cantons and make the life of Palestinians as miserable as possible".

Mr Dugard suggested the UN should leave the Quartet unless it adopted a more proactive approach to protecting Palestinian rights. The grouping is composed of the UN, US, EU and Russia. The UN "does itself little good by remaining a member of the Quartet". It is "not playing the role of an objective mediator that behoves it".

Mr Dugard's comments echoed a complaint by a former UN envoy, Álvaro de Soto, in a report leaked to the Guardian in June. At the heart of the issue is whether the international community should be boycotting the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, which won free elections in 2006 and took over the Gaza Strip this June, effectively splitting the occupied Palestinian territories in half and vastly complicating already difficult efforts to revive the peace process.

The Quartet, now represented by Tony Blair, is backing the government of Mr Abbas, the Fatah leader, and his prime minister, Salam Fayyad. The Quartet position is that Hamas is a terrorist organisation which will remain off limits unless it renounces violence, recognises Israel and accepts existing peace agreements. Critics say boycotting Hamas is collective punishment that is causing untold suffering in Gaza and ignoring the free will of the Palestinians who voted for the movement.

The UN "should be playing the role of the mediator", Mr Dugard said. "Instead the international community has given its support almost completely to one faction - to Fatah," he added.