Henry Siegman (born 1930) is a German-born American. He is President of the U.S./Middle East Project (USMEP),[1] an initiative focused on U.S.-Middle East policy that strives to advance peace through a dignified resolution of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. To examine how those issues interact with the shifting terrain of global geopolitics, it was launched by the Council on Foreign Relations in 1994, and established as an independent policy institute in 2006,[2] originally under the chairmanship of General (Ret.) Brent Scowcroftand. As of July 1, 2016 Siegman assumed the title of President Emeritus of the USMEP.
He says that Yasser Arafat made a "disastrous mistake" in rejecting the peace offer, but that "based on my 14 years of dealings with Arafat, I reject the notion that he was bent on Israel's destruction".[15] Siegman is critical of Ariel Sharon, about whom he wrote: "The war Sharon is waging is not aimed at the defeat of Palestinian terrorism but at the defeat of the Palestinian people and their aspirations for national self-determination".[16]
He strongly defended former president Jimmy Carter's book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.[17] He has also criticized the peace efforts by Ehud Olmert and George W. Bush.[18] Siegman has described the process as a "scam" because of a "consensus reached long ago by Israel's decision-making elites that Israel will never allow the emergence of a Palestinian state".[18]
Jeffrey Donovan, writing in Radio Free Europe, calls him "a leading U.S. expert on the Middle East".[19]
Nathan Guttman, writing in The Forward said that Siegman helped to publicize the "Saudi plan", after it was revealed publicly for the first time in The New York Times.[20] In addition, Guttman writes that Siegman is in the "far-left corner of the Middle East worldview".[7]
Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said that Siegman was known as holding left-of-center views that fit with the American Jewish Congress's liberal approach, and that "when he left the organization, it became clearer he was no longer a critic of Israel, that his criticism borders being anti-Israel".[7]