A Secretive Conference About The Middle East’s Future Featured No Palestinians

WASHINGTON — As Monday night brought news of another devastating episode in Israel’s U.S.-backed offensive in Gaza — a strike on a tent camp sheltering desperate Palestinians — key players in Middle East policy in Washington and beyond were sipping cocktails at the Waldorf Astoria, toasting the end of a secretive conference about the region’s future.

The evening marked the conclusion of the inaugural Middle East-America Dialogue summit — a first-of-its-kind event that some participants say almost totally ignored the Palestinian perspective despite the community’s central relevance to developments in the region.

One attendee noted that only three Arab voices were featured on the conference’s stage: Those of the ambassadors to the U.S. from Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Morocco. There were no Palestinians.

Nor did anyone meaningfully address their concerns. While MEAD says it “aims to solidify the United States’ critical role in promoting stability across the Middle East,” the gathering did not include a speaker who highlighted the experience of the community living through its deadliest war in decades, and, said one attendee, had “very few words about the plight of the Palestinians.”

The multiday confab was invite-only, and the content of the discussions was largely kept private (HuffPost was not invited). But by obtaining MEAD’s agenda, marked “confidential,” and discussing it with several participants, HuffPost got a view into a gathering that focused heavily on closer U.S.-Israel ties and conflict with Iran while being dominated by longtime foreign policy hawks.

The conference agenda “runs the gamut of views from conservative to settler — the whole point is to erase the Palestinians,” said Matt Duss, the executive vice president at the Center for International Policy think tank, who reviewed the document.

The conference did not commit policymakers to any particular moves, and it’s just one of several annual gatherings among national security officials and analysts from the U.S. and its allies. Still, it offers a snapshot into how some important figures in Middle East policy are maneuvering at a significant moment.

Fighting in Gaza is entering its 12th month without a deal for a cease-fire and the release of hostages in sight, and a change in president looms in the U.S. — which is key to the region, given its tens of thousands of troops and deep relationships there.

“It was Israel-America dialogue more than anything else,” one attendee told HuffPost. A “through line” of the discussion “was that the United States needed to do something about Iran, although exactly what, how, and to what effect was left vague,” another said. (HuffPost provided anonymity to allow the attendees to speak freely.)

MEAD drew several top aides to President Joe Biden. Secretary of State Tony Blinken and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas each offered remarks. So did Brett McGurk, the president’s top Middle East adviser, and Amos Hochstein, who leads the administration’s attempt to manage tensions in Lebanon. Panels on digital matters, leadership and greater defense cooperation among the U.S. and its partners featured, respectively, senior White House official Anne Neuberger; former U.S. ambassador to Israel and current Pentagon official Dan Shapiro; and Mira Resnick, the State Department’s new chief official for Israeli-Palestinian affairs. (HuffPost broke the news of Resnick’s appointment last month.)

Some potential major players in a future U.S. administration weighed in, too.

Michèle Flournoy, a candidate for the first female secretary of defense if Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris wins in November, was on a panel on Gaza’s future. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), a possible leader in a second Trump presidency, spoke, as did Mike Pompeo, Donald Trump’s former CIA director and secretary of state, and Trump-era Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, who, like the former president and his family, has cultivated business ties in the Middle East.

The involvement of figures with ties to both the Republican and Democratic parties was by design. MEAD’s four cochairs include Tom Nides, Biden’s former U.S. ambassador to Israel who is rumored to be in the running for a senior Harris administration job, and David Friedman, who was Trump’s ambassador to Israel. The selection of cochairs shows “our commitment to a nonpartisan approach to advancing U.S.-Middle East dialogue,” MEAD’s website reads.

Yet the seeming diversity of political ties belies a unifying theme: ardent support for U.S.-Israel ties.

Friedman is a longtime advocate for Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, which are illegal under international law and which the U.S. and human rights groups say fuel violence in the region. He is now pushing the idea of Israel taking over the area using U.S. funding — a move experts say would spark huge tensions and torpedo the idea of a future Palestinian state existing alongside Israel.

The two other cochairs are Dennis Ross and Elliott Abrams. Abrams is a hard-liner who has downplayed Israeli attacks on civilians and restrictions on humanitarian aid during the Gaza war. Ross, who has worked on Israeli-Palestinian mediation under Democratic and Republican administrations, was described by his longtime aide Aaron David Miller as having “an inherent tendency to see the world of Arab-Israeli politics first from Israel’s vantage point rather than that of the Palestinians.”

The summit held itself out as a wide-ranging strategy discussion. “Diversification of opinion isn’t just encouraged; but pivotal,” the website for the summit reads. “Our policy fosters a rich tapestry of perspectives, welcoming voices from across the spectrum of political, social, and economic thought.”

But in the midst of historic upheaval for Palestinians and across the region due to the war in Gaza, the split of voices was striking to a wide range of participants. “Israelis in the audience told me they were surprised there were so many Israelis there,” the second attendee said.

The move reflects a tendency that many officials believe helped drive the Palestinian militant group Hamas to launch its deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel: the choice by the U.S., under both Trump and Biden, to discount Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy and instead focus on building relationships between Israel and other Arab nations.

MEAD provided comment through an official at the public relations firm SKDK. Cofounded by close Biden adviser Anita Dunn, SKDK has, amid the Gaza war, helped launch a project from Jewish groups targeting “misinformation” on the conflict, and in the process targeted journalists it perceives as unfair to Israel.

“The goal of the MEAD summit is to bring together leaders in the United States and across the Middle East to have in-depth and honest conversations about the future of the region,” the MEAD spokesperson wrote in an email. “All parties in the region are important to this dialogue, and we are proud to have diverse perspectives represented at the Summit, ranging from Israeli leadership to ambassadors from the region like Saudi Arabia’s Ambassador to the U.S. HRH Princess Reema Bandar Al-Saud, Morocco’s Ambassador to the U.S. Yousef Amrani, and Bahrain’s Ambassador to the U.S. Abdulla bin Rashid Al Khalifa.”

“We look forward to building upon our progress and continuing to engage a diverse set of voices in the Middle East and the U.S. at future gatherings,” the spokesperson continued.

The spokesperson did not address a HuffPost query about the source of MEAD’s funding.

“Entry to our summit is not a commodity to be bought, nor can our stage be sponsored for promotion,” the organization states on its website, calling itself “a non-profit” that has not received funding from any government. Middle Eastern governments and individuals with interests in the region have a long and controversial history of funding research and events in Washington, sometimes covertly.

Spokespeople for the White House did not respond to HuffPost’s inquiries about the Biden administration’s view of whether there should have been greater Palestinian representation.

Beyond featuring members of Israel’s current government, the summit did include Israelis from the opposition, including politician Benny Gantz. According to an attendee, the conversations emphasized “the necessity of a ceasefire deal” in Gaza that involves Hamas releasing Israeli hostages — an approach that current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly undermined.

Yet Gantz used his appearance to promote the idea of the Israeli military refocusing its attention to the Hamas ally Hezbollah in Lebanon. U.S. officials worry a conflict there would be even more devastating than the Gaza offensive. Gantz’s suggestion reflected the mood music: As Hochstein, the Biden aide trying to stop escalation in Lebanon beyond the current cycle of tit-for-tat Israel-Hezbollah attacks, “did try to humanize the Lebanese and made a strong case against war,” he did so “in front of a particularly cynical moderator,” an attendee said.

Other top Israeli politicians who spoke include former minister Ayelet Shaked, a right-wing proponent of settlements in the West Bank.