Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs: Who is Jeffrey Feltman?
Sunday, June 14, 2009
In taking over the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, Jeffrey D. Feltman is no stranger to the issues and key players of the region, having spent much of his Foreign Service career in diplomatic posts in Israel and Lebanon. Feltman is also a polarizing figure, as far as Syria and Hezbollah are concerned, after having dealt with him as U.S. ambassador to Lebanon during the second half of the Bush administration.
Born in Greenville, Ohio, Feltman, 50, attended college at Ball State University in Indiana, where he received his undergraduate degree in history and fine arts in 1981. He attended graduate school at Tufts University and earned his master’s degree in law and diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law in 1983.
He joined the Foreign Service in 1986, serving his first tour as consular officer in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. In 1998, he shifted regions and moved to the U.S. Embassy in Hungary, where he worked as an economic officer until1991. The move represented the beginning of a diplomatic career that would focus on Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
From 1991 to 1993, Feltman served as a special assistant to Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, concentrating on the coordination of U.S. assistance to Eastern and Central Europe. The following year he studied Arabic at the University of Jordan in Amman, adding to his French and Hungarian language skills.
In 1995, Feltman began a three-year tour at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, covering economic issues in the Gaza Strip. He became well known locally for personally testing “the freedom of movement of goods through army checkpoints in and out of Gaza by physically standing at one and counting the number of trucks that passed through on a given day,” according to the Jerusalem Post, “and for having gotten the inside track on the fishing situation off the Gaza coast by striking up a relationship with the local known as the “King of Fish” at Gaza’s market.
From 1998-2000, Feltman served as chief of the political and economic section at the U.S. Embassy in Tunisia. Then it was back to Embassy Tel Aviv where he was Ambassador Martin Indyk’s special assistant on peace process issues (2000-2001). In August 2001, he moved to the U.S. Consulate General in Jerusalem, where he served first as deputy and then as acting principal officer until December 2003.
Feltman volunteered to serve at the Coalition Provisional Authority office in Irbil, Iraq, from January to April 2004. The move endeared him to the Bush administration, and earned him his first ambassadorship—to Lebanon. He was sworn in on July 22, 2004, as the United States’ top diplomat in Beirut, and stayed until January 2008.
