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It's Time to Abolish the Quartet
(Ha'aretz) - Martin Peretz The Quartet is a work of the antebellum period - the era before the U.S. tried unsuccessfully to enlist the Europeans, the Russians, and the UN in its venture against Saddam Hussein's charnel house. The U.S. has no great interest in the presence of these parties in the negotiations that it hopes to convene for another go at peace between Israel and Palestinians. And Israel has no interest at all being euchred and then judged by these, its standing impugners. The EU, the UN, and Russia have historically been at odds with Israel, whether Labor was in power or Likud. Moscow is the place where the now expired Iraqis, the Syrians, and the Iranians routinely did their military shopping. There are times when the essential business of the UN seems to be the chastisement of Israel, and that time is almost always. The EU's hazy relevance to the Israeli-Arab conflict is a consequence only of its insistence that it is relevant. Its eminences have been Arafat's ready emissaries, and in this they have been arrayed against those Palestinians who did not want the terror to begin or, at least, arrived at the point where they wanted it to end. Israel ought to insist that the Quartet dissolve. The stakes are too high, for both Israelis and Palestinians, to have these jivers play. This should be a master class run by the U.S.