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Expert Bio
Martin S. Indyk is the Lowy distinguished fellow in U.S.-Middle East diplomacy at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. Previously, he was the executive vice president of the Brookings Institution. Indyk served as President Barack Obama's special envoy for the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations from July 2013 to June 2014. Before his time as special envoy, he was vice president and director of the Foreign Policy program and the founding director of the Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings.
Indyk served as U.S. ambassador to Israel from 1995 to 1997 and again from 2000 to 2001. He also served as special assistant to President Bill Clinton and senior director for Near East and South Asian affairs at the National Security Council (1993–95) and as assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs in the U.S. Department of State (1997–2000).
Before entering government, Indyk was founding executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy for eight years. He serves on the boards of the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Australia, the Institute for National Security Studies in Israel, the Israel Policy Forum, and chairs the Aspen Institute’s Middle East Investment Initiative. Indyk also serves as a member of the advisory boards of the Israel Democracy Institute and America Abroad Media.
Indyk is the author of Master of the Game: Henry Kissinger and the Art of Middle East Diplomacy (A.A. Knopf, 2021) and Innocent Abroad: An Intimate Account of American Peace Diplomacy in the Middle East" (Simon and Schuster, 2009) and the co-author of Bending History: Barack Obama’s Foreign Policy with Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Lieberthal (Brookings Institution Press, 2012).
Indyk received a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Sydney and a doctorate in international relations from the Australian National University.
Affiliations:
- America Abroad Media, advisory board
- Aspen Institute Middle East Investment Initiative, chairman
- Credit Suisse Asset Management, senior advisor
- Institute for National Security Studies (Israel), board director
- Israel Democracy Institute, advisory board
- Israel Policy Forum, board director and convener, advisory council
- Lowy Institute for International Policy (Australia), board director
- MeiraGTx, board director
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The United States and Saudi Arabia both stand to benefit by renewing their central strategic partnership, argue Steven A. Cook and Martin S. Indyk.
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A perceptive and provocative history of Henry Kissinger’s diplomatic negotiations in the Middle East that illuminates the unique challenges and barriers Kissinger and his successors have faced in their attempts to broker peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors.
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The president-elect knows only too well the failures of all the presidents who preceded him, and the hardening of positions that's occurred on both sides.
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Israel’s politics have been upended for much of this year by elections and are now set to be disrupted for much of the rest, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces likely indictment on corruption charges.
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Secretary of State John Kerry is launching new Mideast shuttle diplomacy, but President Obama’s commitment to brokering an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement remains to be seen, says expert Martin Indyk.
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Diplomacy and International Institutions
The prisoner exchange between Israel and Hamas could indicate a shift in Hamas’ willingness to deal with Israel, but the release of convicted terrorists could also mean renewed violence, says former U.S. ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk.
