Avi Berkowitz

Avrahm Berkowitz (born November 4, 1988) is an American attorney and political adviser who served as the Assistant to the President and Special Representative for International Negotiations from 2019 to 2021.

[5] On September 5, 2019, the Trump Administration announced that Jason Greenblatt would be departing in the coming weeks, and that Avi Berkowitz would become more involved in the Middle East peace process.

[7] In January 2020, Berkowitz flew to Israel to meet with Prime Minister Netanyahu and Benny Gantz to discuss the possibility of releasing the Trump peace plan.

On June 12, 2020, UAE Ambassador, Yousef Al Otaiba authored an op-ed in an effort to halt Israel's planned annexation of West Bank territory.

[13] Along with a mutual interest in creating a unified front against the opposing forces of Iran, the concerns detailed in Otaiba's op-ed and planning with Jared Kushner and Berkowitz helped bring vested parties to the negotiating table to identify an alternative solution,[13] ultimately resulting in a normalization agreement reached in August 2020.

[20] The negotiations led to a breakthrough,[21] and on January 5, 2021, Kushner and Berkowitz attended the GCC Summit in Saudi Arabia, where the parties signed an agreement ending the Qatar diplomatic crisis.

[23] In September 2020, Berkowitz, Jared Kushner and other members of the team that negotiated the Israel–United Arab Emirates normalization agreement, were named the most influential Jews of 2020 by the Jerusalem Post.

[24] On December 23, 2020, Berkowitz was awarded the National Security Medal by President Trump for his contributions to the Abraham Accords, which saw normalization agreements between Israel, the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco.

[29] In February 2019, Berkowitz flew with Kushner to six countries (Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Saudi Arabia) in order to unveil a new closely guarded plan to bring peace to the Middle East.

Kushner won “bipartisan praise for driving a 20-year effort to reform prison sentencing and criminal justice to the finish line and ignoring repeated declarations that it was dead .

Berkowitz alongside Steve Mnuchin and David M. Friedman
Berkowitz speaking in Bahrain in 2020