The attacks by Hamas on Oct. 7 and Israel’s subsequent war in Gaza have posed unprecedented challenges for the United States’ relationship with Israel. When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits Washington, DC, next week to meet President Joe Biden and address a joint session of Congress, there will be a long list of issues on the agenda: the Gaza war, tensions with Hezbollah in Lebanon, ongoing challenges posed by Iran, and the future prospects for a normalization accord between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Following Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s remarks to Congress, MEI will convene an expert panel to assess the state of the US-Israeli bilateral relationship, its impact on the political situations in both countries, as well as progress on the US diplomatic efforts to end the Gaza war. What milestones must be reached to end the conflict in Gaza and build a diplomatic framework for post-war reconstruction? What would a post-conflict reconstruction and stabilization period look like and how long will it last? Is a pathway toward a two-state solution, which the US and all of its Arab partners support, still possible? Please join us as our scholars address these and related questions.

Speakers

Aaron David Miller
Senior Fellow, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

David Schenker
Taube Senior Fellow and Director of the Arab Politics Program, The Washington Institute

Shira Efron
Diane and Guilford Glazer Foundation Senior Director of Policy Research, Israel Policy Forum

(Moderator) Brian Katulis
Senior Fellow for US Foreign Policy, Middle East Institute

Extended Speaker Biographies

Aaron David Miller is a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, focusing on U.S. foreign policy. He has written five books, including his most recent, The end of Greatness: Why America Can’t Have ( and Doesn’t Want) Another Great President (Palgrave, 2014) and The Much Too Promised Land: America’s Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace (Bantam, 2008). He received his PhD in Middle East and U.S. diplomatic history from the University of Michigan in 1977. Between 1978 and 2003, Miller served at the State Department as an historian, analyst, negotiator, and advisor to Republican and Democratic secretaries of state, where he helped formulate U.S. policy on the Middle East and the Arab-Israel peace process, most recently as the senior advisor for Arab-Israeli negotiations. He also served as the deputy special Middle East coordinator for Arab-Israeli negotiations, senior member of the State Department’s policy planning staff, in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, and in the office of the historian.

David Schenker is a a Senior Fellow and Director of the Program on Arab Politics at The Washington Institute. Confirmed by the Senate on June 5, 2019, he served as Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs through January 2021. As Assistant Secretary, Mr. Schenker was the principle Middle East advisor to the Secretary of State and the senior U.S. government official overseeing the conduct of U.S. policy and diplomacy in a region stretching from Morocco to Iran to Yemen.  Previously, from 2002-2006, Mr. Schenker served in the Office of the Secretary of Defense as Levant Country Director, the Pentagon’s top policy aide to the Arab countries of the Levant. In that capacity, he was responsible for advising the secretary and other senior Pentagon leadership on the military and political affairs of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and the Palestinian territories. He was awarded the Office of the Secretary of Defense Medal for Exceptional Civilian Service in 2005.

Shira Efron is the Diane and Guilford Glazer Foundation Senior Director of Policy Research. Previously, she spent two decades as a Middle East analyst with various U.S. think tanks, including the RAND Corporation, where she founded and led the Israel program between 2016-2022, the Center for American progress, and Middle East Institute, and the Tel Aviv based institute for National Security Studies. IN 2020-2021, she was a consultant with the U.N. country team in Jerusalem, where she focused on access and movement issues in Gaza. She has a PhD and MPhil in policy analysis from RAND’s Graduate School, an MA in international relations/international business from New York University, and a BSc in biology (major) and computer science (minor) from Tel Aviv University.

Brian Katulis is Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy at the Middle East Institute. He was formerly a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress (CAP), where he built the Center’s Middle East program and also worked on broader issues related to U.S. national security. He has produced influential studies that have shaped important discussions around regional policy, often providing expert testimony to key congressional committees on his findings. Katulis has also conducted extensive research in countries such as Egypt, Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian territories. His past experience includes work at the National Security Council and the U.S. Departments of State and Defense. He holds a Master in Public Affairs from Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs, and a Bachelor of Arts in history and Arab and Islamic Studies from Villanova University.

(Photo by MIRIAM ALSTER/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)