The appointment of Shapiro coincides with the Biden administration’s efforts to safeguard Israel’s growing relationships in the Middle East, at a time when its neighbors are wary of establishing relations with the Jewish state
WASHINGTON — The United States announced on Thursday that former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro will be serving as the Biden administration’s point person on the Abraham Accords and deepening Israel’s integration into the Middle East.
Shapiro’s appointment comes as the Biden administration seeks to maintain Israel’s burgeoning ties in the Middle East while also pursuing Israel-Saudi normalization, at a time when its Arab neighbors are growing increasingly hesitant to build relations with Israel over its far-right government and worsening tensions between Israel and the Palestinians.
“Pleased to announce former U.S. Amb. Daniel Shapiro is joining the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs as Senior Advisor for Regional Integration. Dan will support U.S. efforts to advance a more peaceful and interconnected region, deepen and broaden the Abraham Accords, and build the Negev Forum,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken posted on his Twitter account.
Shapiro’s appointment comes one day after Blinken had warned that “the fire burning in [Israel’s] backyard” makes it “a lot tougher, if not impossible, to actually both deepen the existing agreements as well as to expand them to include potentially Saudi Arabia.”
In his most recent opinion piece for Haaretz, Shapiro wrote that “The Saudis may hope that their turn to China [who mediated the resumption of diplomatic relations between Riyadh and Iran] gives them leverage in demanding more weapons, security guarantees, and civil nuclear technology from the United States – perhaps packaged as compensation for a normalization deal with Israel.” He advised that the key priorities of containing Iran’s nuclear capabilities and Israeli-Saudi normalization should not be “derailed by the raging domestic turmoil in Israel over judicial overhaul legislation and escalating Israeli-Palestinian tensions in the West Bank – both of which Israeli leaders should do everything actually in their power to de-escalate.”
Shapiro re-joins the Biden administration after leading the N7 Initiative, a partnership between the Atlantic Council and the Jeffrey M. Talpins Foundation, which sought to broaden and deepen relations between Israel and Arab and Muslim countries.
“The Biden Administration could not have picked a better person to lead U.S. diplomacy to advance regional integration,” said N7 Initiative Senior Director William F. Wechsler. “Dan’s new position is really a continuation of the role he has been playing at the N7 Initiative, and the N7 Initiative will continue to support him and his counterparts abroad in their efforts to demonstrate the benefits of normalization to the peoples of the region.”
Blinken’s announcement comes several weeks after the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed legislation creating a new special envoy position in the State Department dedicated to the Abraham Accords and Israel’s ongoing integration in the greater Middle East.
The legislation calls for the envoy – appointed by the president, confirmed by the Senate and reporting directly to the secretary of state – to be responsible for coordinating on behalf of the U.S. government with regional ambassadors, nongovernmental organizations and other stakeholders to strengthen and expand the pacts.
Blinken recently told AIPAC leadership that the administration aimed to create a position “to further our diplomacy and engagement with governments, the private sector, nongovernmental organizations, all working toward a more peaceful and a more connected region in order to achieve significant historic progress to deepen and broaden the Abraham Accords, building on the work of the Trump administration.”
Shapiro’s appointment is all the more pressing particularly as senior U.S. diplomat Yael Lempert, the State Department’s previous point person on Israel’s regional integration, is awaiting confirmation to be U.S. ambassador to Jordan.
Since Shapiro’s job is described as special advisor instead of “envoy,” he will not be subject to a Senate confirmation hearing which would have undoubtedly been highly politicized.
“There are a number of Senate-confirmed officials already working on this. The secretary just had a trip to Saudi Arabia where we talked about normalization, raised it with Saudi officials. And we think he can perform all the duties he needs to perform to advance the agenda as the senior advisor,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said.
Miller further denied any implications that Shapiro’s appointment signals Israel’s regional integration has hit a wall.
“It is a priority. We recognize the difficult issues that are in play in making this happen with a number of countries. But if we were giving up on this, if it wasn’t a priority for us, if it wasn’t something that we thought was possible, we wouldn’t be adding new staff to work on it,” he said.