Itamar Rabinovich

Itamar Rabinovich is Professor Emeritus of Middle Eastern History at Tel Aviv University. He is Israel's former ambassador to the United States and former Chief Negotiator with Syria in the mid-1990s, and the former President of Tel Aviv University (1999-2007). He is President Emeritus and Counselor of the Israel Institute (Washington and Tel Aviv), and a Distinguished Fellow of the Brooking Institution's Foreign Policy Program.

Prof. Rabinovich has been a member of Tel Aviv University's faculty since 1971 and served as Ettinger Professor of the Contemporary History of the Middle-East, Chairman of the Department of Middle Eastern Studies, Director of the Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, Dean of Humanities and Rector. He is the Vice Chairman of the INSS (Institute for National Security Studies), an external institute of TAU, and a senior research fellow at the Dayan Center for Middle-Eastern studies. He is co-editor of the Center's new review journal, Bustan .

Professor Rabinovich is the author of nine books on the Modern History and Politics of the Middle East and the co-author and co-editor of several other volumes and he is the author of numerous essays and papers. His most recent books are The View from Damascus (updated, paperback edition, London, September 2011) and The Lingering Conflict: Israel, The Arabs and The Middle East (Brookings, December 2011). In 2016 he published the biography of Yitzhak Rabin with Yale University Press, and Israel Facing a Changing Middle East (with Itay Brun) with Hoover Institution Press. The Rabin biography was translated into seven languages and is the winner of the 2017 Washington Institute’s Gold Medal. He has recently co-authored new book on the Syrian civil war to be published by Princeton University Press in 2020.

Over the years, Professor Rabinovich held several public positions in Israel and in other countries. He is currently Chairman of the Board of the Dan David Foundation, a member of the Advisory Council of APCO WORLDWIDE, a member of the International Advisory Board of the Brookings Institution in Washington and a member of the International Advisory Board of The American Interest.

Professor Rabinovich has held visiting appointments in several academic institutions, including the Institute of Advanced Studies in Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Toronto. He was for several years the Andrew White Professor at Large at Cornell University, and has recently served as Visiting Professor at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution and Distinguished Global Professor at NYU.

Professor Rabinovich is a member of the American Philosophical Society and a foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has been awarded the Honorary Grand Golden Cross of the Austrian Republic and has been made by the Government of the French Republic a Commandeur l'ordre des Palmes Académiques. In 2009 he was awarded the Korn-Gerstenman Prize for contribution to peace in the Middle-East.

 

Among his books:

Syria Under the Ba'th, 1963-66: The Army-Party Symbiosis, Israel University Press, 1972.

The War for Lebanon, 1970–1985, Cornell University Press, 1985.

The Road Not Taken: Early Arab-Israeli Negotiations, Oxford University Press, 1991.

Waging Peace: Israel and the Arabs, 1948-2003, Princeton University Press, 2004.

The Lingering Conflict: Israel, the Arabs, and the Middle East, 1948–2011, Brookings Institution Press, 2011.

The View from Damascus: State, Political Community and Foreign Relations in Twentieth-Century Syria, Vallentine Mitchell, 2008.

Yitzhak Rabin: Soldier, Leader, Statesman, Yale University Press, 2017.

Israel Facing a New Middle East: In Search of a National Security Strategy (with Itai Brun), Hoover Institution Press, 2017.

Syrian Requiem: The Civil War and Its Aftermath (with Carmit Valensi), Princeton University Press, 2021.

Middle Eastern Maze: Israel, the Arabs, and the Region, 1948 – 2022, Brookings Institution Press, 2023.