[NYTr] Palestine: UN Should Quit "Quartet" over Violations of Human Rights

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Ha'aretz - Oct 15, 2007
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/913048.html

Envoy urges UN to quit Quartet over lack of regard for human rights

By Reuters

The United Nations should pull out of the Quartet of Middle East
mediators unless the group starts taking Palestinian human rights
seriously, a UN envoy said on Monday.

John Dugard, the UN special rapporteur on human rights for the
Palestinian territories, told the BBC the world body "does itself
little good" by remaining in the Quartet group of the United States,
European Union, Russia and the United Nations.

"In my most recent report to the General Assembly...I will suggest that
the secretary general withdraw the UN from the Quartet, if the Quartet
fails to have regard to the human rights situation in the Palestinian
territories," Dugard said.

Dugard, who is due to present the report next month, could not
immediately be reached for comment.

The South African, who has served in the independent post since 2001,
said Israel Defense Forces checkpoints in the occupied West Bank were
meant to divide the territory into "cantons" and "make the life of
Palestinians as miserable as possible".

The IDF says its network of West Bank checkpoints, which Palestinians
call collective punishment, are necessary to stop suicide bombers.

Dugard's comments echoed searing allegations from a former UN Middle
East envoy who said in June after leaving the post that UN policy in
the region had failed because it was subservient to U.S. and Israeli
interests.

Alvaro de Soto upbraided the Quartet for failing the Palestinians and
also urged the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to "seriously
reconsider" continued UN membership in the group.

Dugard said the Quartet was "heavily influenced" by the United States,
and criticized Western powers for backing Palestinian Authority
Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction while maintaining a crippling
boycott of Islamist group Hamas.

"The international community has given its support almost completely to
one faction, the Fatah faction," he said. "That's not the role the UN
should take."

Dugard was skeptical that the U.S.-sponsored peace conference set to
take place in Maryland next month would succeed in bridging Israeli and
Palestinian differences on creating a Palestinian state.

He warned of "serious consequences" if expectations are not met,
raising the possibility of a third Palestinian uprising, or intifada,
against Israel.

"Inevitably in a military occupation, there are likely to be those
engaged in resistance," he said, noting that history may treat those
deemed "terrorists" differently.