Aryeh Lightstone - Let My People Know: The Incredible Story of Middle East Peace—and What Lies Ahead

LET MY

KNOW

THE INCREDIBLE STORY

OF MIDDLE EAST PEACE

AND WHAT LIES AHEAD

ARYEH LIGHTSTONE

New York London

2022 by Aryeh Lightstone

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FIRST AMERICAN EDITION

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Names: Lightstone, Aryeh, 1980 author.

Title: Let my people know : the incredible story of Middle East peace and what lies ahead / Aryeh Lightstone.

Description: First American edition. | New York, New York : Encounter Books, 2022. Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021052375 (print) | LCCN 2021052376 (ebook) ISBN 9781641772648 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781641772655 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Lightstone, Aryeh, 1980 | Friedman, David Melech. Arab-Israeli conflict1993Peace. | DiplomatsUnited StatesBiography. | IsraelForeign relationsIslamic countries. Islamic countriesForeign relationsIsrael. | United StatesForeign relations20172021. | United StatesForeign relationsIsrael. IsraelForeign relationsUnited States.

Classification: LCC DS119.76 .L54 2022 (print) | LCC DS119.76 (ebook)

DDC 956.05/3dc23/eng/2O2ii2O9

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021052375

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021052376

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For four years, I had the honor of representing the United States of America first as the senior advisor to the U.S. ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, and then as the special envoy for eco- nomic normalization for the Abraham Accords. I was an ordinary person blessed with an extraordinary opportunity and the chance to witness history as it was being made. During those years, I frequently sat in the room with others who likewise thought of themselves as ordinary people set in positions of extraordinary importanceparticularly Ambassador Friedman, but also many others such as Jared Kushner, Mike Pompeo, and Nikki Haley, to name just a few. They took their jobs extremely seriously and treasured each moment they had to make a difference. I learned invaluable lessons from my boss and my colleagues, and from leaders I interacted with in Israel and the Abraham Accords countries.

This book was written to let my people know what I saw and learned, and to share my thoughts about how the United States can build upon the unprecedented success of the Trump administrations Middle East policy culminating in the historic Abraham Accords. Middle East peace had always been regarded as an unsolvable puzzle. Here I explain the principles that were applied to prepare the way for solving it. I bring readers into the room with me to watch as policies are being formulated. Where I use quotation marks, readers should understand that I am generally giving a close approximation of the words spoken. There are personal vignettes, but no damaging revelations about anyone. With very few exceptions, the people I worked with were admirable and did their very best to advance the interests of the United States.

Because I am writing from my direct experience, I devote considerable space to my own activities on the job. It is first of all my personal story. But I always understood that my experience was part of a much bigger story. I can illustrate the point with a story that I read when I was ten years old and recounted many times to groups I met with in Israel. Right after the basketball game in 1962 where Wilt Chamberlain famously scored 100 points, a reporter asked a team member who had scored 2 points how the game would be remembered in history. Without hesitation he answered, Tonight will be remembered for all of history as the night that Wilt and I combined to score 102 points. I have since learned that the story is apocryphal, but I am sharing it because in my embassy job I was rather like the anonymous 2-point shooter in Chamberlains 100-point game.

I was offered the position of senior advisor by David Friedman because he knew me personally, and for the next four years I spent every waking hour trying to repay the trust that heand through him, the U.S. governmenthad placed in me. History will credit the courage and vision of some remarkable leaders during those four years, but visionary leaders need team members who can execute their ideas. I am proud to have been part of a great team working on behalf of the greatest country in the history of the world. I want to Let My People Know that history was made in the Middle East during the four years of the Trump administration. This book is intended to showcase the ideas and policies that brought success and to demonstrate how best to build upon it in the future.

The U.S. Embassy in Israel never had a true political appoin- tee, from outside the professional foreign policy world, before President Trump nominated David Friedman to serve as his ambassador to Israel. That nomination was a shock to the system. Friedman was not a known personality in Washington, D.C., but his writings and charitable involvement left no doubt that he would be unapologetically pro-Israel. It was even more of a shock when I was appointed as his senior advisor.

There are fewer than ten politically appointed special advi- sors posted to our embassies around the world at any point in time. It takes substantial resources to train, house, and secure American personnel abroad. In the case of career foreign service professionals, this is a sunk cost, but for political appointees it is an expenditure to be carefully meted out where necessary. Political appointments are normally reserved for the highest- profile and busiest posts abroad. For the U.S. Embassy in Israel to receive two political appointees before ambassadors had been nominated to most of our major allies was unprecedented. These appointments signaled that there was going to be a new direction in Middle East policy. In fact, my embassy job would give me an inside perspective on a breakthrough in the region, culminating in the four Abraham Accords signed between September 15 and December 23, 2020.

The way I came to be appointed gave me a clue about how the soil was being tilled for a realignment of Middle East policy. On February 9, 2017, David and I were on the Accela heading from Washington back to our homes on Long Island after an exhausting day of meetings with members of Congress. Our last meeting had been with Senator Bernie Sanders, and we werent in great spirits when we boarded the train. As the car rocked back and forth, we talked intermittently about the days meetings, checked our phones, and dozed a little.