Daniel Levy is a British-Israeli political analyst, former diplomat, and president of the U.S./Middle East Project (USMEP). Born in London as the son of British businessman and Labour politician Lord Michael Levy, he later moved to Israel, served in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), and entered government service.
Levy worked directly within the Israeli foreign policy establishment during the 1990s and early 2000s. He served as a policy advisor to Prime Minister Ehud Barak and as an official member of Israeli negotiating delegations during the Taba summits and the Oslo II interim agreement. In 2003, he was the lead Israeli drafter of the “Geneva Initiative,” a joint Israeli-Palestinian unofficial peace proposal. Prior to leading USMEP, he directed the Middle East and North Africa program at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) and held senior fellowships at the New America Foundation.
Drawing on his background in state negotiations, Levy regularly critiques the framework of the Middle East peace process, arguing before bodies such as the UN Security Council that international reliance on an outdated peace paradigm has functioned to shelter Israeli settlement expansion and military control. He characterizes the status quo in the Occupied Territories as an “apartheid” system and advocates for replacing bilateral negotiations with international legal accountability, human rights standards, and political consequences for violations of international law.
Levy is one of the initiators and prominent signatories of the 2025 public statement, “Global Jewish Call on the UN and World Leaders to Sanction Israel,” which called for international sanctions, diplomatic pressure, and arms embargoes against Israel to protect Palestinian civilian populations and enforce international law.