Ziegler Distinguished Fellow and Director, Project on the Middle East Peace Process
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
David Makovsky is the Ziegler distinguished fellow and director of The Washington Institute’s Project on the Middle East Peace Process. He is also an adjunct lecturer in Middle Eastern studies at Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).
Mr. Makovsky is the coauthor with Dennis Ross of the recently released book, Myths, Illusions, and Peace: Finding a New Direction in the Middle East (Viking/Penguin).
He is also the author or coauthor of a variety of Washington Institute monographs on issues related to the Middle East Peace Process and the Arab-Israeli conflict, including these titles: Lessons and Implications of the Israel-Hizballah War: A Preliminary Assessment (2006); Olmert’s Unilateral Option: An Early Assessment (2006); Hamas Triumphant (2006); Engagement Through Disengagement: Gaza and the Potential for Israeli-Palestinian Peacemaking (2005); A Defensible Fence: Fighting Terror and Enabling a Two State Solution (2004), which focuses on Israel’s security barrier and its relationship to demography and geography in the West Bank.
Mr. Makovsky wrote the history Making Peace with the PLO: The Rabin Government’s Road to the Oslo Accord (Washington Institute/Westview Press/HarperCollins, 1996); and contributed to a collection focusing on the history of U.S. involvement in the first Gulf war, Triumph without Victory (Random House, 1992).
Mr. Makovsky is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. His commentary on the peace process and the Arab-Israeli conflict has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, the International Herald Tribune, the Chicago Tribune, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and National Interest. He appears frequently in the media to comment on Arab-Israeli affairs, including PBS’s Newshour with Jim Lehrer.
Before joining The Washington Institute, Mr. Makovsky was an award-winning journalist who covered the peace process from 1989 to 2000. He is the former executive editor of the Jerusalem Post and was diplomatic correspondent for Israel’s leading daily Haaretz. Now a contributing editor to U.S. News and World Report, he served for eleven years as the magazine’s special Jerusalem correspondent. He was awarded the National Press Club’s 1994 Edwin M. Hood Award for Diplomatic Correspondence for a cover story on PLO finances that he cowrote for the magazine.
In July 1994, with the personal intervention of then Secretary of State Warren Christopher, Mr. Makovsky became the first journalist writing for an Israeli publication to visit Damascus. In total, he has made five trips to Syria, the latest in December 1999 as he accompanied then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. In March 1995, with assistance from U.S. officials, Mr. Makovsky was given unprecedented permission to file reports from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, for an Israeli publication.
A native of St. Louis, Missouri, Mr. Makovsky received a bachelor’s degree from Columbia University and a master’s degree in Middle East studies from Harvard University.
Expertise: Arab-Israeli relations, peace process, U.S. policy, Middle East democratization, Israeli politics, the Palestinians