Tony Blair
Special Envoy
Middle East Quartet
P.O. Box 60519
London
W2 7JU
United Kingdom

Dear Mr. Blair,

Reducing the violence and tension in the Arab-Israeli conflict is a vital objective, but some highly politicized non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that claim to promote human rights play a damaging and counterproductive role in this effort, as documented by NGO Monitor.

For many years, these NGOs have waged a one-sided campaign against Israel, and this has continued in the publication entitled “The Middle East Quartet – A Progress Report,” issued September 25, 2008 by Oxfam, Christian Aid, CARE, World Vision, and other highly politicized groups.

As in previous NGO statements, this publication consists exclusively of allegations against Israel, while ignoring Palestinian terror and the difficult decisions Israel must take to provide legitimate self-defense to its population. The report contains numerous false, misleading, and unsubstantiated claims, and manipulates international and humanitarian law to attack Israel.

For instance, these NGOs repeat the false allegation that Israel is still occupying Gaza, despite the disengagement of 2005, claiming that Israel maintains “effective military control over it (Gaza) and its government and administrative functions.”  (See “The Myth of Occupied Gaza”, David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey, Washington Post, May 10, 2008) This misleading political statement is used to justify NGO condemnations of Israel alone regarding the situation in Gaza, without relating to the complex dimensions, including the role of Egypt, Hamas’ rejection of Israel’s right to exist, rockets fired from Gaza into Israel, and weapons smuggled into Gaza. In actuality, Israel is no longer militarily present in Gaza and has transferred all administrative authority in the territory to the Palestinian government there. (See also NGO Monitor’s detailed analysis of the NGO campaign on Gaza.)

This misrepresentation of international law by the politicized NGO network parrots a legal brief circulated by the PLO in response to the Israeli disengagement and withdrawal in August 2005. In accepting and promulgating the Palestinian version, these NGOs undermine any claims of being unbiased or balanced. A similar distortion is present in the inaccurate use of the term “collective punishment,” which carries specific legal meaning and is inapplicable to Gaza’s blockades and sanctions. (See International Law and Gaza: The Assault on Israel´s Right to Self-Defense, Abraham Bell, Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs Vol. 7, No. 29, January 28, 2008.)

Furthermore, in the latest NGO report, Israel’s legitimate security concerns resulting from Palestinian terrorism originating in the West Bank are erased.  In this context, Israel’s security barrier is repeatedly described falsely as “illegal” and as a violation of the basic human rights of the Palestinian people. While the report concedes that Israeli casualties from Palestinian mass terror attacks have been reduced due to the barrier, the NGO publication makes the unsubstantiated claim that “[i]t is not possible to attribute causes to the decrease in violence against Israelis.”

On the basis of these and many other false or misleading claims, we urge the Quartet to dismiss the NGO Report as biased and counterproductive.

Prof. Gerald M. Steinberg
Executive Director, NGO Monitor