A non-profit group focused on U.S.-Middle East policy plans for the second time to use the petition process under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 to call into question Israel’s status as a U.S. ally, the group’s director said this week.

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative this month rejected the first petition by the group, the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, Inc. (IRmep), which alleged IPR violations and technology diversion and called for a suspension of the U.S.-Israel free trade agreement.

Grant Smith, IRmep’s director, said he plans to file another petition in the near future.

“We’re confident that we’re able to build a stronger petition when the moment’s right,” he said.

Smith said IRmep, which was formed in 2003, wanted to use the Section 301 petition process to highlight policies by Israel, including violations of intellectual property rights and export controls, since USTR is required by law to respond to each Section 301 petition.

“We wanted to go through a process where our concerns wouldn’t be as easily shunted aside,” Smith said. “We wanted to go through a process where they would have to respond to our more historical look at the relationship.”

USTR in a July 2 Federal Register notice declined to initiate an investigation into Israel’s intellectual property rights protection under Section 301 through IRmep’s first petition. However, Smith said IRmep filed the petition with slim hopes that such an investigation would take place and said it would have been a “miracle” if USTR suspended the FTA.

Instead of going through a different route, such as requesting that USTR elevate Israel from the priority watch list to priority foreign country status in its annual Special 301 report on IPR, Smith said his group petitioned for a Section 301 investigation in hopes of putting a spotlight on what he believes runs counter to Israel’s reputation as a U.S. ally.

In the Federal Register notice, USTR said it decided to not initiate an investigation for two reasons. USTR said IRmep, which it describes as “an organization involved in Middle Eastern policy formulation,” in its petition “fails to allege the ‘significant interest’ necessary to have standing to file a petition addressed to an alleged denial of U.S. IP rights.”

Secondly, while the petition cites Article 39 of the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) as the statutory basis for the petition, USTR said that most of the five complaints “raised in the petition are unconnected to the alleged breach of Article 39 of the TRIPS Agreement.” Article 39 covers protection of undisclosed information.

For example, the petition cites six examples from the 1980s and 1990s of Israel allegedly exporting unauthorized versions of U.S. weapons systems which would fall under an export control violation. Export controls lie outside the scope of USTR’s jurisdiction.

The petition’s three other complaints alleged are unauthorized access to a 1985 classified report of industry input on the impact of duty-free treatment of U.S. imports from Israel, the use of proceeds from diamond exports and intellectual property rights of U.S. pharmaceutical firms.

USTR said the TRIPS Agreement issues that are raised in the petition “would be addressed more effectively through the established Special 301 process and the on-going Out-of-Cycle Review of Israel’s IPR protection.”

USTR declined to comment further on the petition.

Smith said he met with USTR officials regarding the petition in mid-May, but declined to discuss the meeting.