NOT for the first time has the Middle East Quartet been criticized for haplessness in dealing with or trying to help solve the Palestinian-Israeli dispute. The damning report issued by almost two dozen aid agencies accusing the quartet — Russia, the US, the EU and the UN — of failing in its mission to move toward a permanent peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, is not the first time the foursome have come under fire. Last year in similar tones John Dugard, the UN special rapporteur on human rights for the Palestinian territories, was hardly flattering of the quartet when he claimed it had done nothing to protect Palestinian civilians.

Dugard was the second prominent UN envoy to denounce the quartet as ineffective. Again last year and after 25 long years with the world body, somebody who knows what he’s talking about, Undersecretary-General Alvaro de Soto, also blasted the group in a 52-page confidential report, accusing it as well as the UN of undermining the goal of a Palestinian state.

The recent warning by a coalition of 21 aid agencies — including some of the world’s most prominent as Oxfam, Save the Children, Care, Cafod and World Vision — that the peace process would fall apart unless the quartet made swift and dramatic progress toward its goals, is dire indeed.

It is a fact that conditions for Palestinians, which the quartet was meant to improve, have worsened since peace talks recommenced under US sponsorship in 2007. Israeli settlements, which are illegal under international law, are expanding faster than they were last year, and the aid agencies say, are “taking a drastic toll on Palestinian daily life.”

But it is equally true that like any international grouping, and the UN comes most famously to mind, the quartet is as strong or weak as the collective political will or ill will of its members. Over the five years of its existence, if the quartet has proved ineffective, it is because it is heavily influenced by the United States, Israel’s staunchest supporter.

The EU countries also have a part in the blame for being completely hypocritical after refusing the results of democratic elections won by Hamas, then initiated an economic embargo which has made Palestinian life in Gaza sheer misery.

The idea that the US and the EU, which respectively support Jewish settlements and a Palestinian economic embargo, are part of a group which seeks to help the Palestinians win their full rights, including statehood, is duplicity and hypocritical and a paradigm not easily explained. But its results are very clear. To be fair, the quartet is trying to bring about changes on the ground to improve living conditions and the economy of the Palestinians, and it is also trying to engage the donor community for greater support to the Palestinian government.

And diplomats who are just as critical as the aid agencies of the quartet’s political performance consider that as an institution worth keeping, the argument being that the presence of the UN, the EU and Russia prevents the US from taking sole possession of the Middle East file.

No doubt though, the criticism of the quartet, being levied as they are at high levels from one year to the next, shows how continually ineffective the grouping is. The quartet can only be credible if its members can actually make a difference for the people they are supposed to be trying to help.