Henry Siegman

Henry Siegman is president of the U.S./Middle East Project (USMEP) which was part of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) from 1994 until 2006, at which time it was established as an independent policy institute.

Mr. Siegman is also a research professor at the Sir Joseph Hotung Middle East Program of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

In the more than thirty years of his involvement in the Middle East peace process, Mr. Siegman has published extensively on the subject and has been consulted by governments, international agencies, and non-governmental organizations involved in the peace process.

Mr. Siegman has authored several hundred articles and op-ed pieces that have appeared in editorial pages in the United States and throughout the world, including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, the International Herald Tribune, Al Ahram, Al Hayat, Le Monde and the Financial Times. His articles have also appeared in the New York Review of Books, Foreign Affairs, Middle East Journal, Commentary, Current Affairs, Le Monde Diplomatique, The Nation, and the London Review of Books.

Major studies directed by Mr. Siegman at the CFR, where he served as a Senior Fellow on the Middle East for fourteen years, included “Harnessing Trade for Development and Growth in the Middle East” (2002); “Strengthening Palestinian Public Institutions,” (1999) conducted on behalf of the European Commission and the government of Norway, and a CFR Independent Task Force report “U.S. Middle East Policy and the Peace Process.” In 2002, he directed a study commissioned by the U.S. Department of State and the National Intelligence Council on the implications of “viability” for Palestinian statehood.

Prior to 1993, Mr. Siegman served as Executive Director of the American Jewish Congress for 16 years, and as general secretary of the American Association of Middle East Studies and editor of its quarterly Middle East Studies. He was a Resident Scholar at the Rockefeller Foundation Study Center in Bellagio, Italy.

Mr. Siegman served as a commissioned officer in the US Army during the Korean War and was awarded the Bronze Star medal for service in Korea.

Mr. Siegman’s areas of specialization include Arab-Israel relations, the Middle East peace process, U.S. Middle East policy, interreligious relations, and the American Jewish community.



General Brent Scowcroft, Eric Melby and Henry Siegman

General Brent Scowcroft, Eric Melby and Henry Siegman

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Can Kerry Rescue a Two-State Peace Accord?

If the purpose of President Barack Obama’s visit to Israel was to dispel the view held by most Israelis, and by rightwing American Jewish supporters of AIPAC and the Likud’s annexationist policies, that he is hostile to Israel and to the Zionist enterprise, it must be judged a brilliant success. Not everyone was converted, but his words and personal charm seemed to have worked wonders on most Israelis.
While his visit was not expected to revive prospects for a two-state solution, he spoke far more directly and energetically about the need for an end to Israel’s occupation and about his own continuing efforts to help the parties achieve an agreement than his recent disengagement from the peace process prepared anyone for. But nothing he said in Jerusalem or Ramallah–and, more importantly, that he failed to say–justifies an expectation that his reengagement will be of a kind that has any chance of preventing Benjamin Netanyahu’s new government from finally nailing down the coffin in which they are burying a viable two-state outcome.

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