Quartet sans trois

Nice description of the shower that is supposed to be facilitating a peace process between the racist war criminals of the State of Israel and their victims. I saw it in this article on a former UK cabinet minister, Chris Patten's call for a bolder approach to Israel and the Palestinians by the EU:

"The default European position should not be to wait to find out what the Americans are going to do, and if the Americans don't do anything to wring our hands. We should be prepared to be more explicit in setting out Europe's objectives and doing more to try to implement them."

He implicitly criticised US dominance of the Middle East quartet – the US, EU, UN and Russia – by saying he concurred with the description of it by the leader of the Arab League as the "quartet sans trois".

Patten, who found it "easier to get into a maximum security prison in the UK than to enter Gaza", said Israel's relaxation of its blockade had not gone far enough. "It's moved from about minus 10 to about minus eight. It doesn't do anything to help restore economic activity in Gaza.

"It's difficult to understand what preventing exports has to do with security. It has everything to do with the view that Gaza should be collectively punished to discredit Hamas. Unfortunately there are some centuries, if not millennia, of history that show that does not work.

Doesn't work? That rather depends what you are trying to achieve.