Quartet on the Middle East

Additionally, they agreed to transform their cooperation into a permanent forum dedicated to overseeing the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

This office was tasked with taking "tangible steps on the ground to advance the Palestinian economy and preserve the possibility of a two-state solution".

[8][9] James Wolfensohn, the former president of the World Bank, was appointed Special Envoy for Israel's disengagement from Gaza in April 2005.

[10] He stepped down the following year because of restrictions in dealing with the Islamic militant group Hamas and the withholding of money from the Palestinian Authority, risking its collapse.

Tony Blair announced that he had accepted the position of the official envoy of the Quartet, the same day he resigned as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and as a Member of Parliament on June 27, 2007.

In July 2016, the Quartet reported:The continuing policy of settlement construction and expansion in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, designation of land for exclusive Israeli use, and denial of Palestinian development, including the recent high rate of demolitions, is steadily eroding the viability of the two-state solution.

This raises legitimate questions about Israel’s long-term intentions, which are compounded by the statements of some Israeli ministers that there should never be a Palestinian state.

It was within this context that the United Nations passed Security Council Resolution 2334 in December 2016 in another bid to address the settlement question.

[22][23] In a speech to the UN General Assembly in September 2018, Mahmoud Abbas called Donald Trump's policies towards Palestinians an "assault on international law".

[30] On March 23, 2021, the Quartet discussed the reviving of "meaningful negotiations" between Israel and the Palestinians who both need "to refrain from unilateral actions that make a two-state solution more difficult to achieve.

... Having spent most of the last three years in a state of near paralysis, and having failed to dissuade the Palestinians from seeking UN membership and recognition in September 2011, the Quartet has finally reached the limits of its utility.