Daniel C. Kurtzer

Daniel Charles Kurtzer was born in 1949 and raised in Elizabeth, New Jersey, in an Orthodox Jewish family.[1] A State Department profile also identified him as being from Silver Spring, Maryland.[6] He earned a bachelor’s degree from Yeshiva University, followed by two master’s degrees and a doctorate in political science from Columbia University.[1]

After beginning his government career, Kurtzer left the State Department and served as dean of Yeshiva College. His education and academic work preceded a diplomatic career that began in the U.S. Foreign Service in 1976.[1][6]

Kurtzer joined the Foreign Service in 1976, beginning in the State Department’s Bureau of International Organization Affairs. His initial duties included work on United Nations political, economic, humanitarian, and development issues, support for the U.S. delegation to the General Assembly and Security Council, and participation in U.N. conferences on water and desertification.[6][7] He also represented the United States at a semiannual U.N. Development Program meeting, where he was responsible for dispensing more than $80 million in U.S. foreign assistance.[7]

After serving as dean of Yeshiva College, Kurtzer rejoined the Foreign Service in 1979 and was assigned as second secretary for political affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo.[1][6] In 1982, he became first secretary for political affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv. He received the Director General of the Foreign Service Award for reporting during his time there.[1]

Kurtzer returned to Washington in 1986, serving as deputy director of Egyptian Affairs and later as a speechwriter and member of the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff.[1][6] In 1989, he became deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs. In that role, he had responsibility for the Middle East peace process and U.S. bilateral relations with Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and the Palestinians.[6]

In 1994, Kurtzer became principal deputy assistant secretary for Intelligence and Research. He was named acting assistant secretary in May 1997.[6] During the Reagan administration, Secretary of State George Shultz included Kurtzer and diplomat Dennis Ross on a small team working on Arab-Israeli diplomacy; Ross described Kurtzer as a Jewish career Foreign Service officer.[8] State Department and Jewish Virtual Library accounts describe a 29-year Foreign Service career, while Kurtzer described his service as lasting 30 years.[4][7]

President Bill Clinton appointed Kurtzer ambassador to Egypt. The Senate confirmed him on October 28, 1997, and the State Department’s historical list gives his service as January 13, 1998, to June 22, 2001; official summaries more broadly describe the ambassadorship as 1997–2001.[6][9] An Encyclopaedia Judaica entry describes him as the first Jew appointed U.S. ambassador to an Arab country. It also reports that his appointment initially caused discomfort in Egypt and that he later won over Egyptian counterparts through his knowledge and professionalism.[1]

Kurtzer wrote about the value of learning Egyptian social practices in order to conduct diplomacy. In a retrospective account, he recalled that knowledge of funerals and condolence calls helped him gain access to parts of Egyptian society normally closed to Americans. He also recalled that the State Department gave him interviews with former U.S. officials who had served in Egypt, and that their descriptions of cultural and social practices were especially useful to him. He said he lacked a book that prepared him for dealing with President Hosni Mubarak, whom he regarded as the central leadership challenge for an ambassador.[10]

Kurtzer’s family lived in Egypt twice, for seven years in total. They did not hold a Passover Seder there: he wrote that it would have felt strange because the holiday repeatedly recalls the Israelites’ enslavement in Egypt. He also described positive experiences of Shabbat and other Jewish holidays in Egypt, including a Muslim chef who sometimes joined the family’s Friday-night songs.[11] During his ambassadorship, he accumulated more than 200 baseball caps at his Cairo office and residence. The caps represented ships passing through the Suez Canal, U.S. businesses and agencies in Cairo, and the New York Yankees; he said they brought informality and Americana and served as conversation pieces.[12]

Kurtzer became U.S. ambassador to Israel in 2001, serving from July 18 of that year until September 15, 2005.[13] His tenure unfolded amid the Second Intifada and Operation Defensive Shield in 2002.[14] On September 11, 2001, while serving in Israel, he kept a scheduled appearance at Jerusalem’s Museum on the Seam because attendees had come for the event and many had not yet heard about the attacks; he continued receiving updates from the United States while there.[15]

He also took part in public diplomacy and community activities. Kurtzer recounted participating in the first baseball game for young people from Jewish and Arab communities. He described the players’ practice, his throwing out the first pitch, and their teamwork as an example of how joint sports could increase contact and understanding.[16] In 2007, after his diplomatic service, he was named the first commissioner of the professional Israel Baseball League.[4]

Kurtzer was a member of the U.S. delegation to the 1991 Madrid peace conference and has been described as one of its architects.[3][14] He later called the conference’s multilateral negotiations among the most satisfying work of his Foreign Service career. The talks addressed water, the environment, economic development, refugees, and arms control and regional security; participants included Israelis and Arabs from across the region, including Saudis, who sat together in many cases for the first time.[7]

Kurtzer also participated in efforts to advance the Oslo process. As Secretary of State Warren Christopher’s Middle East negotiator, he shuttled between Tunis and Jerusalem in an effort to narrow the gap between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel.[17] At a 2001 conference marking the tenth anniversary of Madrid, he argued that the Oslo process’s breakdown could be traced to flawed planning and basic misperceptions in the original agreement negotiated by Shimon Peres and Yossi Beilin.[3] He also regretted that the post-Madrid multilateral track had not been pursued more vigorously. In his view, continued multilateral talks could have lent support and legitimacy to Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and helped reduce some anti-Arab-Israeli hostility.[3]

Kurtzer’s reading of the peace process was not the only one presented at that conference. Yossi Alpher argued that most Arab-Israeli agreements had been reached without direct U.S. involvement and warned that Arab parties might expect the United States to “deliver” Israel.[3] Kurtzer’s claim that greater American involvement in Oslo might have prevented the process’s collapse was therefore an attributed interpretation, rather than an uncontested conclusion.[3]

Kurtzer also reflected critically on the 2000 Sharm el-Sheikh summit. He recalled that President Bill Clinton called the meeting after the outbreak of the Intifada in an effort to end violence and resume negotiations. Kurtzer attended a drafting session chaired by foreign ministers, which he remembered as exceptionally acrimonious; he said the summit did not achieve its intended outcome and that neither bilateral nor multilateral diplomacy restored comity between the sides.[7]

On the 2000 Camp David summit, Kurtzer’s assessment placed much of the responsibility for failure on Yasser Arafat, whom he said did not negotiate and “put nothing on the table.” He also said he could not understand why Arafat withdrew without offering a maximalist position.[18] In a separate retrospective account, Kurtzer credited Mubarak with helping persuade a reluctant Arafat to attend the summit at his urging and with pressing the Clinton administration not to abandon the peace process afterward.[10] These accounts reflect Kurtzer’s own interpretation of contested diplomatic episodes.

Kurtzer has repeatedly argued that negotiations require clear objectives, sustained diplomacy, and practical steps by the parties. At a 2007 conference, he said negotiations needed an articulated long-term goal, guiding principles for final-status issues, and timetables that would focus the parties on defined issues and deadlines.[2] He called for behavioral changes as well: Israel should stop building settlements in the West Bank — known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria — while the Palestinian Authority should build government institutions and take concrete steps against terrorist groups. He also suggested elections might be necessary before a final-status agreement could be completed.[2]

Kurtzer’s comments on settlements have been a recurring point of political disagreement. In May 2002, he said U.S. opposition to Israeli settlements was political and reflected Washington’s belief that Israel would be better protected and more accepted within borders without settlements.[5] In a separate remark, he said Israel could expand settlements but questioned whether doing so was advisable from a security and political standpoint.[5] A later account reports a dispute over his statements about U.S.-Israel understandings concerning settlement blocs: it says a 2005 newspaper report attributed to him the claim that no understanding existed, which he denied, and that he later said on Israeli television that commitments concerning Israeli population centers were firm and that he expected Israel not to return to the 1967 lines.[19]

In 2010 testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Kurtzer described Middle East peacemaking as an American national interest, not a favor to the parties, and argued that determined U.S. diplomacy could succeed even in imperfect conditions.[20] He cited reduced violence, West Bank economic growth, and public support for a two-state solution as reasons he believed opportunities remained; these were his assessments and the evidence he presented, not findings independently established by the testimony record.[20] He urged the United States to state its views on final-status issues without imposing a settlement plan, then build a sustained strategy around those views. His recommendations included using prior negotiations as a starting point, potentially addressing borders and Jerusalem simultaneously, securing regional support, reviving multilateral talks, promoting Palestinian state-building, and applying firm diplomacy on settlement activity and Palestinian violence and incitement.[20]

On Hamas, Kurtzer said he opposed U.S. dialogue with the organization at that time because he saw no indication it had changed its policies or practices. At the same time, he called for urgent attention to Gaza’s humanitarian conditions and said aid could be delivered in ways that protected Israeli and Egyptian security.[20] His testimony also criticized the Bush administration for neglecting diplomacy and dialogue as national-security tools. He argued that engagement with Iran, rather than consistently strong rhetoric, could improve the prospects for diplomacy, and proposed strengthening the Peace Corps and facilitating travel to the United States as ways of projecting American ideals and values abroad.[2]

In 2014, Kurtzer assessed U.S.-Israel relations as operating at three levels: leaders, senior officials, and everyday cooperation among lower-level officials. He said relations at the first two levels were poor amid tensions between President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while lower-level cooperation had been sustained and enhanced. He also said strategic cooperation, including U.S. funding, research and development, and technology support, had increased substantially.[21]

Kurtzer continued to offer policy commentary in later years. In 2023, he argued that Israel should not reoccupy Gaza and needed to consider a political end to its control of the territories described in the source as occupied. He warned that military action without a strategic objective or exit plan could leave Israel in a dangerous situation.[14] In another interview that year, he advocated a policy shift toward separation from the Palestinians and said the United States would need to help initiate a process, potentially with European and Arab partners.[22]

Discussing the October 7 attack and Israel’s response, Kurtzer anticipated scrutiny of intelligence and operational decisions as well as political accountability. Drawing on his experience in the State Department’s intelligence unit, he noted that intelligence staff can issue warnings that may not be acted on; his comments were analysis and speculation ahead of an inquiry, not findings from one.[14] He also clarified his earlier call for the Biden administration to cut security assistance to Israel. Kurtzer said he had intended to use U.S. policy as leverage against actions by Israeli ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, regretted the wording because readers drew a conclusion he had not intended, and continued to support monitoring the use of U.S.-supplied weapons under the Leahy Law.[14]

After retiring from the Foreign Service in 2005 with the rank of Career Minister, Kurtzer joined Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs as the S. Daniel Abraham Professor of Middle East policy studies.[4] Some sources give 2006 as the year he left government service, while State Department accounts and other references place his retirement in 2005.[4][14] His academic work and public commentary continued his focus on U.S. policy and Arab-Israeli diplomacy.[4]

Kurtzer advised the bipartisan Iraq Study Group and served on the advisory council of the American Bar Association’s Middle East Rule of Law Initiative. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie appointed him to the New Jersey-Israel State Commission. His institutional roles also included board service at the American University in Cairo, the Middle East Institute, and the National Library of Israel; he served on Secretary of State John Kerry’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board and remained active in Track II diplomacy.[4][23]

His books include co-authorship of Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace: American Leadership in the Middle East and The Peace Puzzle: America’s Quest for Arab-Israeli Peace, 1989–2011, as well as editorship of Pathways to Peace: America and the Arab-Israeli Conflict.[4] His writing and testimony have addressed the conditions for negotiations, the role of American leadership, and the practical and political limits of diplomatic initiatives.[4][20]

Kurtzer’s public positions on settlements, U.S. diplomacy, Palestinian governance, Gaza, and the terms of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations have been politically contested. His statements are best understood as policy arguments made in particular diplomatic and political contexts, rather than as neutral findings about the disputes they address.[2][5] A profile based on an interview with his brother describes him as forceful in advancing State Department policy, including on settlements, and says this sometimes brought him into conflict with leaders on the Israeli right.[24]

His appointment as ambassador to Israel was also described as controversial. An Encyclopaedia Judaica entry says the Zionist Organization opposed the appointment, fearing he would be too harsh toward Israelis and too partisan toward Arabs. The same entry reports that Knesset member Zvi Hendel used the term “yehudon” (“little Jew”) about Kurtzer on the Knesset floor and accused him of interfering in Israel’s internal affairs; it characterizes the incident as antisemitism.[1] Separately, a Ynet profile says Kurtzer’s brother viewed him as forceful in carrying out U.S. policy and reports that his positions sometimes put him at odds with Israeli leaders on the right.[24]

There are minor inconsistencies in the record of Kurtzer’s career chronology. State Department historical records give exact Egypt service dates beginning in January 1998, while official biographies use 1997 as the broader appointment year.[6][9] The State Department dates his retirement to 2005, while a Calcalist profile gives 2006.[4][14] Sources likewise describe his Foreign Service career as either 29 or 30 years.[4][7] These differences appear to reflect varying distinctions between appointment, service, and retirement dates rather than disagreement about his principal diplomatic posts.