One of the UN's own calls for the UN's head to stop playing favourites in Israeli-Palestinian affairs, writes Marian Houk in Jerusalem The UN Human Rights Council's special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territories, John Dugard, said this week that UN Secretary-General Ban Ki- Moon should pull out of the International Quartet the US put together to support President Bush's vision of Middle East peace unless the Quartet pays due regard to deteriorating human rights conditions in the Palestinian territories. His remarks come as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is shuttling between Jerusalem and Ramallah to check on progress in Israeli- Palestinian negotiations ahead of Middle East peace talks that the US will host in Annapolis later this year. After a meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah, Rice told journalists at a joint press conference that the obligations of both parties "are spelled out in a really rather concrete way in the first phase of the roadmap", and that "the United States will be working with both parties to make certain that those roadmap obligations are implemented. I think this is an important role that we can play as a member of the Quartet and as a party with friendly relations with both Israel and the Palestinians." Dugard, a South African professor of international law who opposed the former apartheid regime in his country, was interviewed by the BBC World Service and by Al-Jazeera's English service. "Every time I visit [the occupied territories], the situation seems to have worsened," he said. Dugard was last in the occupied territories in late September. Among his comments, Dugard pointedly criticised the Quartet for not having ever mentioned the World Court's 2004 advisory opinion on the legality of Israel's separation wall. Rice assuredly had to pass by the formidable wall on her trips to and from Ramallah, but she is not known to have ever taken a close look at, or visited other sections of, the wall. She is scheduled to meet with representatives of both Israeli and Palestinian civil society groups in the coming days. Dugard has become increasingly testy in recent years, while staying on message. Israel has criticised him as biased and pro-Palestinian, refusing to receive him officially. Dugard is one of the few UN human rights experts that have investigated the situation in the Palestinian territories at first hand. Denied official entry, Dugard enters on his national passport. Other UN human rights officials have generally refused to enter unless given official Israeli visas for their missions. Dugard's increasingly bold statements suggest that he has some backing, certainly of his own government, South Africa, which is sitting on the UN Security Council at present. Dugard must also be provoked by a controversy in the US revolving around remarks about Israel and its treatment of Palestinians made in 2002 by South Africa's Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Tutu was named to head a UN Human Rights Council investigation into the deaths of a large number of Palestinian civilians -- many members of the same family -- who were killed in their sleep by an Israeli artillery attack on Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza last year. The investigation mission did not get Israeli agreement to proceed. Tutu said, when he announced its cancellation, that "sometimes not making a decision is making a decision." Dugard's interviews this week appear as follow-ups on statements made on Al-Jazeera late September. Dugard said then that the UN and the Quartet neglect his reports and recommendations. Dugard also suggested that the Quartet seemed all too eager to back US policies favouring Israel's positions. According to the Ramattan Palestinian news agency, "Dugard said that Ban receives directions from Washington." Such reports have had an impact. Last week, senior Hamas official in Gaza Mahmoud Zahar called for Ban to quit his post "because of his full partiality towards Israel". Zahar cited Dugard's Al-Jazeera remarks, saying, "we follow with a great concern the biased steps carried out by the UN in relation to Middle East conflicts... It adopts the occupation's position [and] justifies the occupation's crimes." On Israel's side, few appear coming forward to contest the facts. Israel's President Shimon Peres said confidently in a recent press conference at his Jerusalem residence that Israel is "today being supported by the Quartet". In an interview Monday, Dugard told the BBC, "the UN does itself little good by remaining a member of the Quartet." The BBC reported that Dugard on his most recent visit "was very struck by the sense of hopelessness among the Palestinian people", which he attributed to "the crushing effect of human rights violations". Of restrictions on movement, Dugard is quoted as saying that the purpose of some checkpoints in the middle of the West Bank is to break it up "into a number of cantons and make the life of Palestinians as miserable as possible". The BBC reports that Dugard added that the Quartet was weak because it was "heavily influenced" by the US. The UN "should be playing the role of the mediator, [but] instead the international community has given its support almost completely to one faction -- to Fatah", he said. "That's not the role the UN should take." To Al-Jazeera, Dugard said Monday: "the Quartet of Middle East negotiators are not dealing effectively with the issue of Palestinian human rights." He added: "If the UN is not able to persuade other members of the Quartet, particularly the US, to acknowledge that Israel is a serious violator of human rights and is in serious violation of international law," the UN should withdraw from the Quartet. Dugard's remarks -- which he said will be reflected in a report he is due to present shortly to the UN General Assembly -- 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. Designated "confidential", the report published in its entirety by The Guardian. De Soto indicated that the last straw was were remarks made by Ban 25 March after meeting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. De Soto wrote that Ban "introduced explicitly, for the first time, the notion of conditionality" -- i.e. that future meetings with Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas would depend on his positions and actions. De Soto wrote: "I fail to see why it was necessary to escalate the UN's position, and more so to cross the conditionality line. On the contrary, given that this was post-Mecca we should, I felt, have been loosening, not tightening, our policy. His taking that position effectively buried my consistent efforts to salvage the significant role which the UN might have played in assisting the evolution of Hamas in government, and even as a movement, and with it the search for a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." Contrary to attempts to lock Hamas out, a group of retired US ambassadors and officials recently urged Rice to bring Hamas into a second stage of the projected Annapolis Middle East peace conference. But in interview with a Palestinian journalist Monday, Rice was cagey about possible participation of Hamas: "Eventually, you want the widest possible Palestinian representation, but that representation ought to be representation that believes that a two-state solution is possible. And in order to believe that a two-state solution is possible, you have to recognise the right of the other party to exist." Rice added: "President Abbas, by the way, represents all the Palestinian people; he was elected by the Palestinian people. In every sense, he is the legitimate representative. But eventually I hope that the concrete nature of the vision of a Palestinian state will lead to unity among all responsible Palestinians." In an apparently parallel interview with an Israeli journalist, Rice said: "we are not quite ready to start inviting people yet. We need to let this process move forward a little bit more, particularly between the parties. They've established far more confidence in each other than frankly I thought they would have by this time, given that just several months ago there was a unity government that had not accepted the roadmap conditions. I believe it's important to let them continue for a while. We'll invite in plenty of time for people to get there." The planned peace conference, Rice said, "is a meeting about the Israeli- Palestinian issue" only. This, she indicated, is "a more mature track" while more comprehensive peace talks, involving occupied Syrian territory, for example, would have to wait.
