Yael Lempert

Image by TechCampGlobal

By Nathan Guttman November 14, 2016

Architect of Israel’s $38 billion Package With America

On September 14, years of Yael Lempert’s arduous work came to fruition. On behalf of the Obama administration, she completed negotiations for a 10-year, $38 billion Memorandum of Understanding with Israel. The agreement, signed at the State Department, ends years of negotiations and provides Israel with the largest American military-aid package in history.

Lempert, the National Security Council’s senior director for Israel, Egypt and the Levant, was tasked by Obama with coordinating the negotiations more than two years ago. Since then, the 42-year-old career diplomat has shuttled between Tel Aviv and Washington, earning the respect of fellow American negotiators as well as Israeli counterparts in what turned out to be an excruciating effort to bring about a major agreement between two administrations that lack trust in each other.

Lempert came to the table with extensive first-hand knowledge of Middle East challenges. She previously served around Iraq as well as in Cairo, and Jerusalem. She was in Tripoli during the Libyan revolution that brought about the fall of Moammar

Gadhafi. Lempert played a key role in negotiating the release of American journalists the Libyan government captured during the revolt.

Growing up in Ithaca, New York, Lempert probably got her first impressions of the Middle East through the eyes of her mother, Lesly Lempert, a civil rights activist who had done extensive work on the plight of Palestinians under Israeli occupation.

But Israeli officials who dealt with Lempert, including those who spent hours on end ironing out details of the massive aid package, had nothing but praise for her professionalism and unbiased approach.

Nathan Guttman, staff writer, was the Forward’s Washington bureau chief. He joined the staff in 2006 after serving for five years as Washington correspondent for the Israeli dailies Haaretz and The Jerusalem Post. In Israel, he was the features editor for Ha’aretz and chief editor of Channel 1 TV evening news. He was born in Canada and grew up in Israel. He is a graduate of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

This year, we have stood together in strength and sorrow. Our Forward team has worked around the clock to help you find clarity amid the chaos.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO