Israeli Officials Hold Talks on Iran; West Bank Tensions Continue

A family friend of Ilan Goldenberg came home from Lebanon in a bodybag when Goldenberg was four years old. The Israel Defense Forces invaded Lebanon in 1982 to force out the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Ilan Goldenberg participated in an intensive Arabic program at Middlebury College in the summer after high school. Ilan Goldenberg worked for the National Security Network in Washington starting in 2004. Ilan Goldenberg served as a Middle East adviser at the Pentagon after Obama took office.

Ilan Goldenberg joined the American team for Israel-Palestine peace talks in 2013. The 2013 Israel-Palestine peace talks collapsed due in part to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s refusal to freeze settlement expansion in the West Bank. Ilan Goldenberg left government in 2014 and joined the Center for a New American Security.

Ilan Goldenberg created and led a working group on Gaza at the Center for a New American Security with Hady Amr during the first Trump administration. Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023. Ilan Goldenberg joined the Vice President’s office as a special adviser on the Middle East shortly before October 7, 2023.

Inside a mourning tent in the village on the outskirts of Hebron, a group of American foreign policy leaders sat with the Palestinian family in August 2025. “It was as tough of a thing as I had seen in many of my trips into Israel, to the West Bank,” Goldenberg told Responsible Statecraft, referring to the scene of the killing.

Goldenberg, who grew up a staunch Zionist, described an ideological shift after his Arabic program at Middlebury: “I start hearing all these things that are just very different than the world I grew up with,” he said.

The ensuing process played out like a “grieving process,” he recalled. “First it's denial, and then you move to anger,” Goldenberg added. In discussions during the 2013 peace talks, Goldenberg was more reticent about pushing Israel, according to Matt Duss, a former foreign policy adviser to Sen.

Bernie Sanders. On the Gaza working group, Goldenberg and Amr concluded: “If we keep going as it is, this whole thing is going to implode,” Goldenberg told Responsible Statecraft. After the October 7, 2023, attack, Goldenberg pitched options for post-war Gaza to Israeli officials in mid-November 2023, including supporting a technocratic Palestinian government.

“Their response was, ‘we want to talk to you about this, but we can't, because the politicals won't let us,’” he said. Goldenberg later concluded: “Whatever war they launched in Gaza, Hamas would still be there at the end,” he told Responsible Statecraft. U.S.

Should not have provided certain weapons, pointing to laws limiting arms to human rights violators: “We shouldn't have been, in retrospect, giving them those weapons,” he told Responsible Statecraft. Goldenberg remained in his role because he believed Biden and Harris “wanted this war to end,” he said.

During the Harris campaign, Goldenberg handled Jewish outreach and noted divisions: “I'd spent all my time focused on what was going on over there, without really understanding how bad things were domestically,” he said.

He regretted not having a Palestinian speaker at the Democratic National Convention: “That was the one thing I wish we'd done differently,” Goldenberg said. At J Street, Goldenberg pushes to end the “blank check” for Israel, including conditioning weapons sales and cracking down on settlers.

“My job is to make sure that whoever walks into that door in 2029 has a different set of experiences they're coming with,” he told Responsible Statecraft.

A progressive foreign policy researcher who knows Goldenberg said: “There's a predetermined zone of comfort for policy. Philip Gordon, Harris’ former national security adviser, noted Goldenberg’s scenario planning: “One of Ilan's scenarios, and I dare say his core scenario, was Hamas surviving. U.S.

Official worried Goldenberg’s influence could slow pro-Palestinian shifts. Progressives criticize the Ceasefire Compliance Act Goldenberg helped craft, with one researcher saying: “What this is saying is, ‘don't hold Israel accountable to existing law. That's too complicated and too controversial.

Goldenberg responded: “There's been a bunch of members who signed on to this, who are not on Block the Bombs.