Events & Calendars "The Ultimate Deal or the End of the Line?: The Trump Administration and the Middle East Peace Process" -- Daniel Kurtzer

A year after Donald Trump boasted that he could achieve the "ultimate deal" to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the peace process is in shambles. Following Trump's announcement on Jerusalem and the decision to cut assistance to United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the Palestinians now reject a leading U.S. role in the search for peace. Is this the end of the road, or can the parties-- and Trump --find an exit ramp from this crisis?

Daniel Kurtzer is the S. Daniel Abraham Professor of Middle East Policy Studies at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. During a 29-year career in the U.S. Foreign Service, Ambassador Kurtzer served as the United States Ambassador to Israel and as the United States Ambassador to Egypt. He was also a speechwriter and member of the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff and served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs and as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Intelligence and Research.

Kurtzer is the co-author of Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace: American Leadership in the Middle East (2008), co-author of The Peace Puzzle: America’s Quest for Arab-Israeli Peace, 1989-2011(2013), and editor of Pathways to Peace: America and the Arab-Israeli Conflict (2012). He served as a member of Secretary of State John Kerry’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board and previously served as an advisor to the bipartisan Iraq Study Group. In 2007, he was named the first Commissioner of the professional Israel Baseball League.

Ambassador Kurtzer received a Ph.D. from Columbia University.