Making peace in the long-troubled Middle East is likely to be one of the top priorities of the next American president. He will need to take account of the important lessons from past attempts, which are described and analyzed here in a gripping book by a renowned expert who served twice as U.S. ambassador to Israel and as Middle East adviser to President Clinton. Martin Indyk draws on his many years of intense involvement in the region to provide the inside story of the last time the United States employed sustained diplomacy to end the Arab-Israeli conflict and change the behavior of rogue regimes in Iraq and Iran. Innocent Abroad is an insightful history and a poignant memoir. Indyk provides a fascinating examination of the ironic consequences when American naïveté meets Middle Eastern cynicism in the region's political bazaars. He dissects the very different strategies of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush to explain why they both faced such difficulties remaking the Middle East in their images of a more peaceful or democratic place. He provides new details of the breakdown of the Arab-Israeli peace talks at Camp David, of the CIA's failure to overthrow Saddam Hussein, and of Clinton's attempts to negotiate with Iran's president. Indyk takes us inside the Oval Office, the Situation Room, the palaces of Arab potentates, and the offices of Israeli prime ministers. He draws intimate portraits of the American, Israeli, and Arab leaders he worked with, including Israel's Yitzhak Rabin, Ehud Barak, and Ariel Sharon; the PLO's Yasser Arafat; Egypt's Hosni Mubarak; and Syria's Hafez al-Asad. He describes in vivid detail high-level meetings, demonstrating how difficult it is for American presidents to understand the motives and intentions of Middle Eastern leaders and how easy it is for them to miss those rare moments when these leaders are willing to act in ways that can produce breakthroughs to peace. Innocent Abroad is an extraordinarily candid and enthralling account, crucially important in grasping the obstacles that have confounded the efforts of recent presidents. As a new administration takes power, this experienced diplomat distills the lessons of past failures to chart a new way forward that will be required reading.

"A trenchant and often pugnacious demolition of the numerous misconceptions about strategic thinking on the Middle East" -The New York Times Now updated with a new chapter on the current climate, Myths, Illusions, and Peace addresses why the United States has consistently failed to achieve its strategic goals in the Middle East. According to Dennis Ross-special advisor to President Obama and senior director at the National Security Council for that region-and policy analyst David Makovsky, it is because we have repeatedly fallen prey to dangerous myths about this part of the world-myths with roots that reach back decades yet persist today. Clearly articulated and accessible, Myths, Illusions, and Peace captures the real­ity of the problems in the Middle East like no book has before. It presents a concise and far-reaching set of principles that will help America set an effective course of action in the region, and in so doing secure a safer future for all Americans.

Aryeh Lightstone, former Senior Advisor to the U.S. Ambassador to Israel and Special Envoy for the Abraham Accords, is uniquely poised to unravel the past, present, and, most importantly, the future of U.S. foreign policy with the Middle East. "A powerful affirmation of humanity’s capacity to achieve the extraordinary." —Jared Kushner, Senior Advisor to the President, 2017-2021 "Aryeh demonstrates that faithful adherence to one’s core beliefs—in both his faith and his nation—are not only possible but necessary. Read and enjoy." —Mike Pompeo, U.S. Secretary of State, 2018-2021 The Trump Administration's "Peace to Prosperity" vision for the Middle East was unveiled on January 28, 2020. What followed over the next eleven months, concluding with the signing of the Israel-Morocco normalization agreement was one of the most fascinating and consequential periods of U.S. foreign policy in a generation, leading to five normalization agreements between Israel and Muslim states. The Abraham Accords achieved what had seemed impossible for decades and set the Middle East on a trajectory toward a broad regional peace. Aryeh Lightstone is uniquely positioned to tell the story. As the senior advisor to the U.S. Ambassador to Israel, he was in the room for nearly every major discussion and decision involving Middle East policy. He was tasked with the most complex and sensitive component of the Abraham Accords: turning them into practical action and doing it quickly—during a pandemic, no less. In addition, he led the Abraham Accords Business Summit and the Abraham Fund, and served as the key contact between Israel and the other Accords nations. Let My People Know provides a behind-the-scenes account of the strategies that allowed the Abraham Accords to be struck, and an unvarnished look at the region's idiosyncrasies that factored into the process. A rabbi and an enthralling storyteller, Lightstone paints a vivid picture of the varied cultures and personalities involved. He also offers a glimpse into the day-to-day activities of an embassy. Finally, he explains what the Biden administration must do better to advance America's interests abroad. We now have a paradigm for a forward-looking Middle East policy that ultimately benefits the United States. Lightstone makes the case for strategic action to maintain the momentum.

Political stability is a crucial precondition for peace in the Middle East. In The Middle East Peace Process: Vision versus Reality, Joseph Ginat, Edward J. Perkins, and Edwin G. Corr have assembled a comprehensive overview of the complex peace negotiations taking place among Middle Eastern nations to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and forge normal relations between Arab nations and Israel. More than thirty academics and practitioners probe, discuss, and engage themselves with issues concerning the peace process. The volume focuses first on the Oslo Agreement and the Palestinian Track; then addresses Israeli relations with Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq; and concludes with an examination of relations between Israelis and Palestinians in Jerusalem. The Middle East Peace Process is the result of the Center for Peace Studies conference “The Peace Process in the Middle East,” cosponsored by the International Program Center at the University of Oklahoma and the University of Haifa in Israel. The volume features a foreword by HRH Prince El Hassan bin Talal of Jordan and a preface by David L. Boren, President of the University of Oklahoma.

The official monthly record of United States foreign policy.