Jason Greenblatt

Jason Greenblatt served as the U.S. Special Representative for International Negotiations and Special Envoy for the Middle East from January 2017 to October 2019, a role in which he was the primary day-to-day American diplomat responsible for the Arab-Israeli peace process — the longest-standing diplomatic assignment in American foreign policy. A graduate of Yeshiva University and Cardozo School of Law, Greenblatt built his career as an attorney at the Trump Organization, where he served as Executive Vice President and Chief Legal Officer for nearly two decades before his White House appointment. He is an Orthodox Jew who wears a kippah publicly in all diplomatic settings, and his appointment signaled a deliberate departure from the model of career diplomat neutrality that had characterized previous envoys.

Greenblatt's tenure was part of the team — alongside Jared Kushner and David Friedman — that developed the Trump administration's approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That approach rejected the premise that had governed thirty years of American diplomacy: that Israeli settlement activity was the primary obstacle to peace, that the Palestinians deserved a state with the 1967 lines as a baseline, and that American recognition of Jerusalem should be withheld as a "card" for final-status negotiations. Greenblatt was a consistent voice for the position that Palestinian leadership's refusal to negotiate, its glorification of terrorism through the "pay to slay" policy compensating the families of attackers, and its institutional dysfunction made it an unsuitable peace partner regardless of what Israel offered.

He departed the administration in October 2019 before the formal release of the Trump peace plan ("Peace to Prosperity") to pursue private sector opportunities, but remained active as an author and commentator on Middle East policy. His 2021 book, "In the Path of Abraham," details his account of the negotiations and his conviction that honest American engagement — unburdened by the false premises of previous diplomatic frameworks — produced the conditions for the Abraham Accords. At Rank 38, Greenblatt represents the Orthodox Jewish attorney who brought a different kind of diplomatic credibility: not the career Foreign Service officer's neutrality, but the conviction of a religious Jew who understood who Israel's enemies were and refused to pretend otherwise.