UPDATED: April 18, 2019

Former United States ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk visited Hendricks Chapel on Tuesday night to discuss his career working as a foreign diplomat and where he sees the U.S.’ relations in the Middle East today.

Indyk previously served as executive vice president of the Brookings Institution and as U.S. special envoy to for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations from July 2013 to June 2014.

The talk, co-sponsored by the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and WAER, was moderated by Jim Steinberg, a professor of social science, international affairs and law. Indyk was the third and final speaker in the university’s spring 2019 University Lecture series.

Indyk said his interest in the Middle East began in October 1973, in the middle of the Yom Kippur War between Israel and surrounding Arab states led by Egypt and Syria. Indyk, witnessing the war as a 24-year-old student, said he had an epiphany while watching the two sides fight in Jerusalem.

“I became convinced that my purpose was to try to somehow make peace in the Middle East,” he said.

Twelve years later, after he earned his Ph.D., and after he worked for the pro-Israel American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Indyk founded the Washington Institute for Near East Policy think tank dedicated to U.S. policy in the Middle East.

While working in Washington, Bill Clinton approached Indyk and asked if he would like to work on his campaign, Indyk said. He soon became Clinton’s adviser on the Middle East during his campaign, and when Clinton won, he became a special assistant to the president.

He remembered thinking that it was like “destiny” that he became Clinton’s foreign policy adviser, at a time when peace in the Middle East became an increasing possibility.

“I said to Clinton ‘the stars will align to have a breakthrough for Israeli Peace.’”

But as he started his job, Indyk couldn’t imagine how to be an ambassador, he said. He had immersed himself in the Israeli-Arab conflict, researching at think tanks and on Clinton’s campaign trail. But suddenly he was the main bridge between the U.S. and the Middle East.

Still, Indyk described himself as an “arrogant young man,” and he said the job felt natural at the time.

Soon, negotiations between Israel and Palestinians started to form, and Indyk said he found himself in charge of organizing peace talks between major powers in the Middle East.

Indyk said being the U.S. ambassador to Israel was a “dream job.” He was working closely with President Clinton, who he said he had a personal relationship with, and that he worked with advisers who followed his commands because they had ambitions of being ambassador when he left.

At the time, he believed he would find a breakthrough in the Middle East.

“We were on track,” he said. “(But) when I look back at it, I realize there was something wrong with that picture that was pretty clear from the first days there”

Indyk served as ambassador to Israel from 1995-97, and from 2000-01. He was hired by President Barack Obama’s administration as the U.S. special envoy for the Israeli-Palestinian negations in July 2013 and served until June 2014.

He said Clinton was committed from day one to pursuing peace, but that Obama had “broken his pickax” during his first term — Obama was convinced that the two sides weren’t serious about making a deal, he said. When John Kerry was appointed as secretary of state, he got current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbasto negotiate, something that came “to everybody’s amazement,” he said.

Now, during President Donald Trump’s administration, he said the notion of a deal between Israeli and Palestinian authorities is “far-fetched.” He said that moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem drove Palestinians away from negotiations.

Trump gave the Iran Nuclear Deal a bad reputation, and Israel and Saudi Arabia were becoming the U.S.’ regional partners in the Middle East, Indyk said.

But he added that Saudi Arabia is “deeply-flawed,” in part because of Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman Al Saud’s shift of institutional power to himself, which causes “immense humanitarian problems and has no end in sight.” He also referenced the murder of The Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

“The Saudi-American relationship is in crisis,” he said.

When introducing himself to the audience, Indyk said his path to becoming an international diplomat was unusual. He grew up in Australia, moved to Israel, went back to Australia and then moved to the U.S.

After he served as executive vice president of the Brookings Institution in Washington D.C., Indyk took a job is a distinguished fellow and director of executive education at the Council on Foreign Relations, a political think tank in Washington D.C.

“My path to government service is the kind of story that can only happen in America,” Indyk told the audience. “I chose to be an American.”

CORRECTION: In a previous version of this post, Bill Clinton’s title was misstated. Clinton was never a senator. The Daily orange regrets this error. 

Published on April 16, 2019 at 11:57 pm

Contact Gabe: gkstern@syr.edu | @gabestern326