NORWICH, Conn. — Veteran diplomat Martin S. Indyk, an author and leader of prominent U.S. think tanks who dedicated years to finding a path to peace in the Middle East, died Thursday. He was 73 years old.
His wife, Gahl Hodges Burt, confirmed by phone that he died of complications from esophageal cancer at the couple’s home in New Fairfield, Connecticut.
The Council on Foreign Relations, where Indyk has been a distinguished fellow on U.S. and Middle East diplomacy since 2018, called him “a rare and credible voice in an otherwise polarized debate about U.S. policy toward the Middle East ”.
A native of Australia, Indyk served as U.S. ambassador to Israel from 1995 to 1997 and from 2000 to 2001. He was special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations during former President Barack Obama’s administration from 2013 to 2014.
When he resigned in 2014 to join the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington, it symbolized the latest failed US effort to forge an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal. He continued as Obama’s special adviser on Middle East peace issues.
“Ambassador Indyk has invested decades of his extraordinary career in helping Israelis and Palestinians achieve lasting peace. It is the cause of Martin’s career and I am grateful for the wisdom and vision he brought to our collective efforts,” then-Secretary of State John Kerry said in a statement at the time.
In a May 22 social media post on X, amid the ongoing war in Gaza, Indyk urged Israelis to “wake up,” warning them that their government “is leading them to greater isolation and ruin” after that a proposed peace agreement was rejected. Indyk also called out Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in June at X, accusing him of playing the “martyr to a crisis he manufactured” after Netanyahu accused the US of withholding weapons Israel needed .
“Israel is at war on four fronts: with Hamas in Gaza; with the Houthis in Yemen; with Hezbollah in Lebanon; and with Iran overseeing operations,” Indyk wrote on June 19. “What does Netanyahu do? Attacking the United States based on a lie he invented! The President and Leader must withdraw his invitation to speak to Congress until he retracts and apologizes.”
Indyk also served as special assistant to former President Bill Clinton and senior director for Near Eastern and South Asian affairs at the National Security Council from 1993 to 1995. He served as assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs at the State Department from the USA since 1997 until 2000.
In addition to serving at Brookings and the Council on Foreign Relations, Indyk worked at the Center for Middle East Policy and was the founding executive director of The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Indyk’s successor at the Washington Institute called him “a true American success story.”
“Born in Australia, he came to Washington to have an impact on shaping American Middle East policy and he certainly did – as a pioneering scholar, insightful analyst and remarkably effective political entrepreneur,” said Robert Satloff. “He was a visionary who not only founded an organization based on the idea that wise public policy is rooted in sound research, but also embodied it.”
Indyk has written or co-written several books, including Innocent Abroad: An Intimate Account of American Peace Diplomacy in the Middle East It is Master of the Game: Henry Kissinger and the Art of Diplomacy in the Middle Eastwhich was published in 2021.
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