Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Jake Walles is a nonresident senior fellow in the Middle East Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he focuses on Israeli-Palestinian issues, Tunisia, and counterterrorism. He was a foreign service officer with the U.S. Department of State for more than 35 years, serving as the U.S. ambassador to Tunisia from 2012 to 2015 and as consul general and chief of mission in Jerusalem from 2005 to 2009. Walles also served as senior adviser in the State Department’s Bureau of Counterterrorism from 2015 until his retirement in 2017.
During his long career at the State Department, Walles was actively involved in Middle East peace negotiations beginning with the Madrid Middle East Peace Conference in 1991 and continuing through the Obama administration. He was the recipient of the State Department’s Distinguished Honor Award in 2016 for his contributions to U.S. national security policy.