Quartet Envoy Tony Blair speaks to the media during his visit to the Nabco Factory in the West Bank city of Nablus. (Rami Swidan, Maan Images)

One of the great hopes and subsequent disappointments in modern Middle Eastern diplomacy has been the "Quartet" of four major international players that was supposed to monitor, shepherd and promote Palestinian-Israeli peace-making during the past five years. The group - comprising Russia, the United States, the European Union and the United Nations - has not only failed to advance the peace process since its establishment in 2002. Astoundingly, it has also whittled away the political credibility and impact of two of those parties - the EU and UN.

Now, not surprisingly, a coalition of 21 respected international aid agencies working on the ground in Palestine has openly criticized the shortcomings of the Quartet for failing in its mission and leaving the diplomatic arena dangerously leaderless.

The agencies - including Oxfam, Save the Children, Care, Christian Aid and World Vision - said that in five of the 10 main areas the Quartet had identified to improve Palestinians' daily living conditions, the situation had actually deteriorated. The situation also had worsened for most Palestinians since the Annapolis peace process was launched last November. It added that the Quartet had not held Israel accountable for continuing to build settlements on occupied land, and that travel restrictions on Palestinians had also increased.

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Christian Aid director Daleep Mukarji noted that nearly a year after the Annapolis process was launched, "we are seeing exponential settlement growth, additional check-points and - because of this - further economic stagnation. The Quartet is losing its grip on the Middle East peace process."

Things could have been very different had the Quartet been a truly impartial and decisive instrument of peace-making. In retrospect, however, the Quartet was another fig leaf designed to hide American dominance of a diplomatic process that was driven primarily by Israeli interests. This was initially visible in the Quartet's habit of merely issuing verbal statements criticizing Israeli settlement expansion, but doing nothing about it, while acting with more force against the Palestinians.

The epitome of that double standard was the Quartet's position supporting the Israeli response to the Hamas parliamentary elections victory in early 2006. The Quartet refused to deal with Hamas until the latter accepted the conditions Israel and the US had laid down. It did nothing of equal magnitude to demand that Israel, for its part, also respect international law and UN resolutions and stop using excessive violence against Palestinians.

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