Hello all,
Thank you for all of your engagement. We now have over 1,000. Please keep pushing through your networks. At the bottom of this update, I'm pasting contacts sent to me by one of the signatories (thanks, Gary!).
In my former life, working on Palestinian-Israeli permanent status negotiations, it was both reassuring and frustrating to know that experienced diplomats were, by and large, incredibly intelligent, dedicated, capable and honorable people. They had a strong command of the issues. But their hands were tied.
The challenge here is of course the intense divisiveness and politicization of the conflict exacerbated by growing geopolitical rivalries. The UNSC is paralyzed right now. There is no indication that top officials within the P5 are able to work together, constructively, to chart a coherent path forward. Your advocacy can make a difference.
But, if the P5 of the UNSC lacks unanimity and that prevents the UNSC from acting in a case needed to maintain international peace and security, the UNGA has a pathway to intervene: UNGA 377 ("Uniting for Peace").
The pathway was first used to circumvent Soviet vetoes during the Korean War and is naturally fraught with all sorts of risks and challenge (negotiating between 15 members vs. the entire UNGA and the blocks within it). If the UNGA invoked "Uniting for Peace", it can lay out steps member steps will take to respond to a crisis. You can read about it online.
If that happened, it can get very messy and polarizing and I have trouble predicting how that would play out. It was intended as a last resort. I personally still want to believe the P5 and UNSC can work on this together to avoid a potentially tragic outcome. But the lack of unanimity within the P5 isn't necessarily the end of the road -- that's a helpful point to raise to emphasize the gravity of the situation here.
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Below is contact info President Biden: https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/ Google your individual Representatives and Senators to get links to their contact page.
Stefphane Dujarric spokesman for UN Secretary General: dujarric@un.org
Palestinian Authority (NY office): palestine@un.int
Israel Embassy: info@washington.mfa.gov.il
Israel Consulate (in case embassy mail box is full as it is now): consular.services@newyork.mfa.gov.il
Egypt embassy: consulate@egyptembassy.net
Jordan embassy outreach@jordanembassyus.org
Link to contact Saudi embassy: https://saudiembassy.net/contact-us
US Mission to the UN https://usun.usmission.gov/mission/contact-us/
Also contact religious organizations and peace groups