The Joe Biden administration has sent Hady Amr, the deputy assistant secretary of state for Israel and Palestinian affairs, to the region in an effort to de-escalate what’s become the deadliest fighting between Hamas and Israel since the 2014 war. Here's what you should know about Amr, the most senior State Department official tasked with managing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
His background. Amr brings to the table years of experience working on Israeli-Palestinian negotiations during the Barack Obama administration. From 2013 to 2017, he was deputy special envoy for the negotiations, with a focus on Gaza and economics. Before that, he served as the deputy assistant administrator in USAID’s Middle East bureau, where he worked on the US aid agency's response to the Arab Spring.