They Built a Friendship Fighting for Peace. The Friendship Is Over.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/27/opinion/israel-palestinians-peace.html

Version 0 of 1.

It’s hard to remember now, as Gazans eat grass to try to survive a siege, and as Israelis emboldened by the trauma of Oct. 7 seem poised to annex the West Bank, but there was a time when peace in the Middle East felt possible.

In 2003, I moved to Washington to cover foreign policy and fell in with a group of friends — human rights lawyers, policy wonks and aides on Capitol Hill — who were pushing for a two-state solution. It had been 10 years since Israelis and Palestinians started down that path with an interim peace deal in Oslo. Palestinian frustrations had boiled over into the second intifada. But there was still a sense that a deal was possible. Two of our friends seemed to be living proof of that.

Daniel Levy, the gregarious son of a British lord, and Ghaith al-Omari, a quiet Jordanian lawyer, were well known around town for having sat on opposite sides of a round of peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians in Taba, Egypt, in 2001. They had forged a friendship that became a symbol in Washington of the potential for peace. I once attended a dinner party where the host introduced them by announcing: “If there is ever peace in the Middle East, it will be because of these two.”

Recently, I wondered what those two old friends thought now about their attempt to help broker a deal. Had peace really been possible? Or had we been dreaming? Most of all, I wondered if they were still friends. So I called them up. I learned that their relationship had waxed and waned over the years, like the peace process itself. Then it took an unexpected turn.

During the talks in Taba, Mr. Levy was an adviser to Yossi Beilin, the most dovish member of the Israeli negotiating team. Mr. Omari was an adviser to Yasir Abed Rabbo, the most dovish member of the Palestinian team. They got closer to a permanent deal than any previously, but stopped because of Israeli elections and did not resume. Still, Mr. Levy and Mr. Omari did not give up.