Ambassador Daniel C. Kurtzer is a lecturer and the S. Daniel Abraham Professor in Middle Eastern policy studies at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He served as U.S. ambassador to Egypt from 1997 to 2001 and to Israel from 2001 until 2005 when he retired after a 29-year career in the U.S. Foreign Service.
His other diplomatic posts included political officer at the U.S. embassies in Cairo and Tel Aviv, deputy director of the office of Egyptian affairs, speechwriter on the policy planning staff, deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, and principal deputy assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research. Throughout his career, Ambassador Kurtzer played key roles in shaping U.S. policy in the Middle East peace process. He crafted the 1988 peace initiative of Secretary of State George P. Shultz. He was instrumental in bringing about the Madrid Peace Conference in 1991. He was subsequently coordinator of multilateral peace negotiations and U.S. representative in the Multilateral Refugee Working Group.
He is the recipient of several prestigious awards including the President’s Distinguished Service Award and the Department of State Distinguished Service Award. Since leaving government service, Ambassador Kurtzer has served as an advisor to the Iraq Study Group, a member of the Board of Trustees of the American University in Cairo, the first commissioner of the professional Israel Baseball League, and a member of the New Jersey-Israel Commission.
Ambassador Kurtzer holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University. He is the co-author of Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace: American Leadership in the Middle East. He was a foreign policy advisor to President Obama’s campaign in 2008 and is a contributor to the Washington Post and other publications on developments in the Middle East.
Amb. Daniel Kurtzer is a member of MEI’s International Advisory Council.
Summary
Read the full article at Brookings. Amb. Daniel Kurtzer is a member of MEI’s International Advisory Council.
This article was first published in The Hoover Institution’s The Caravan.
Daesh or ISIS does not represent an existential threat to any state except Syria and Iraq. It occupies and controls ungoverned space in the region between Iraq and Syria and in parts of northern Africa; and its self-proclaimed Caliphate has benefited from the seizure of some income producing assets in these areas. Daesh depends on the dynamism of success and expansion, both of which have been in short supply of late.
Read the full op-ed on CNN.com.
Few states face the kind of complex, sustained security challenges that Israel does.
Israel has not enjoyed one day of peace with its neighbors since its independence in 1948. Many Arab and Muslim states have maintained an economic and political boycott against Israel for decades.
Read the full article at Foreign Affairs.
A review of Anonymous Soldiers: The Struggle for Israel, 1917-1947, By Bruce Hoffman (Knopf 2015). This book review was first published by The Washington Post.
Read full article at Politico Magazine.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has come to the United States, spoken his piece and returned home to Israel to finish campaigning for the March 17 elections. Netanyahu’s visit to Washington was neither the triumph he expected nor the disaster forecast by opponents of the visit. Indeed, the visit shed no new light on the supposedly central issue of the day: the state of play in the Iran negotiations.
Read full article at The Washington Post.
