Quartet in the dock

IF the UN withdraws from it, the damage done to the Quartet might not be extensive, seeing how insipid the group’s members have been thus far in their attempts to break ground in the Palestinian-Israeli impasse. Still, a dropout would be considered a serious blow to peace efforts. The possible UN departure from the Quartet makes the outlook for the major US-sponsored peace conference between the Palestinians and Israel, expected next month, even bleaker than at present. The statements made by John Dugard, the UN human rights envoy for the Palestinian territories — that the US, the EU, the UN and Russia were failing to protect the Palestinians and that the purpose of some of the West Bank checkpoints was to break it up “into a number of cantons and make the life of Palestinians as miserable as possible” — are serious, and his warning that he will urge the world body to withdraw from the Quartet of Middle East mediators unless it addresses Palestinian human rights should be taken seriously. The international Quartet the US put together to support President Bush’s vision of Middle East peace has never really helped promote peace and, for most of its brief history, has been an onlooker, as developments have unfolded — and a biased one at that. The Quartet has failed to engage properly on human rights and is also failing to deal with the current rift between the rival Palestinian factions of Fatah and Hamas. The UN should be playing the role of mediator but, instead, has given its support almost completely to one Palestinian faction, that of Fatah. That is not the role the UN should take.
The Quartet has been, at times, all too eager to back US policies favoring Israel’s positions. The group should especially be taken to task for not having ever mentioned the World Court’s 2004 advisory opinion on the legality of Israel’s separation wall. Dugard’s remarks, which he said will be reflected in a report he is due to present shortly to the UN General Assembly and in which he will suggest that the secretary-general withdraw the UN from the Quartet if the Quartet fails to evaluate the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories, resonate with the end-of-mission report of UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Alvaro de Soto, who resigned in frustration in May. De Soto indicated that the last straw were the remarks made by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in March after meeting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in which Ban introduced explicitly a notion of conditionality — that future meetings with then Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas would depend on his positions and actions. It is doubtful the UN would seriously consider pulling out of the Quartet; that would show it to be even less than having observer status in the conflict. But the reaction by some of its top officials to what or what it is not doing with regards to the peace process must be strongly considered. At the very least the UN should stop playing favorites.

 

Fahrenheit 2007

HELD breaths in Washington and Baghdad betray growing fear that the latest Kurdish rebel assault across the Turkish border that wasted a dozen soldiers might prove the proverbial straw that finally broke the camel’s back. Erdogan has so far resisted trigger-happy temptation, but mounting attacks mean he will not be able to fend off growing domestic demand for an attack on PKK hideouts in Iraq’s Kurdish mountains. As argued in this space before, Bush and Maliki administrations are right in calling for talks to defuse the crisis. But they are wrong in not following up the justified proposal with concrete actions that can lend credibility to their diplomacy. Surely Iraq’s occupying forces and central government realise well the importance of keeping the relative calm in the Kurdish north. The instability there is chiefly political, with the administration not recognising the government in Baghdad. But for violence to flare up there risks plunging yet another oil rich area into chaos, with potential catastrophic spillovers. It is unfortunate that on both counts, straightening out Kurdish disobedience and sorting out the PKK phenomenon, Iraq’s president, Jalal Talabani, has remained largely mute. Himself a prominent Kurd, he should bear greater responsibility in cooling down the tempers.
The present state of affairs in the Middle East is already unprecedented in many ways. Expanding the conflict will only have compound negative effects. Yet all parties concerned seem only to facilitate the combined sleepwalk into the nightmare. Also, the Kurdish question has popped up at a time of nerve-testing confrontation over the Iranian uranium enrichment drive. Had it not been for Russian and Chinese influence countering the Western push, the collective Gulf outlook would have been a lot duller. Of course, restraint has not been in excess supply in that equation either, with Washington refusing to rule out “all options” and Teheran boasting how many thousands of rockets it can send airborne within a minute. Clearly, 2007 has been one of the most trying years for the Middle East. There is still time to keep an uglier account of present happenings from tomorrow’s history books. And that requires sanity prevailing in opinion making circles. When all parties are bent upon confrontation, blood invariably flows. The need of the hour is purposeful talks, which require sincere gestures of give and take.

—Khaleej Times