PrintStudy Group on Arab-Israeli Peacemaking
Lessons learned and re-learned in American peacemaking efforts
Participating Organizations
Project Chairs
Daniel Kurtzer, Chair and Co-director
Scott B. Lasensky, Co-director
The United States Institute of Peace has undertaken a major analytical study of Arab-Israeli peace negotiations since 1991, focusing on U.S. peacemaking strategies and initiatives. Its results are published in a book entitled Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace: American Leadership in the Middle East. Harold Saunders, former deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern and South Asian affairs and Middle East negotiator under four presidents, has called the book "the most forceful, thorough, concrete, and concise analysis of the U.S. performance in the Arab-Israeli peace process since it was born as a political process in 1974."
Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace: American Leadership in the Middle East, authored by Ambassador Daniel C. Kurtzer and USIP’s Scott B. Lasensky, is the result of a consultative process of individual interviews with over one hundred former and current policymakers, parliamentarians, civil society leaders, and experts from the United States, Europe and the Middle East. Virtually every U.S. diplomat and policymaker involved in Arab-Israeli negotiations since the end of the Cold War was interviewed individually. Interviews were conducted by the authors and a Study Group comprising three of the most respected experts on Arab-Israeli relations in the United States: Professors William Quandt (University of Virginia), Steven Spiegel (University of California, Los Angeles), and Shibley Telhami (University of Maryland and the Brookings Institution).
The book provides a set of practical guidelines for future U.S. negotiators, along with an assessment of achievements and missed opportunities in the Arab-Israeli negotiating experience. It extends the analysis and updates the conclusions presented in the Institute’s highly praised 1991 study, co-authored by Ambassador Samuel Lewis and Kenneth Stein, who served as special consultants to the Study Group. Richly illuminated with historical narrative and the first-hand accounts of a diverse array of figures who have been at the center of Arab-Israeli negotiations, Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace is ideal for future negotiators, policymakers, students, and scholars of Middle East diplomacy.
Daniel C. Kurtzer is a former United States ambassador to Israel and Egypt, and currently holds the S. Daniel Abraham Chair in Middle East Policy Studies at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. Scott B. Lasensky is a senior researcher at the United States Institute of Peace, and holds a Ph.D. in international relations from Brandeis University.