John V. Whitbeck

John V. Whitbeck was born in 1946 in New York City. In 1976, his law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell, sent him on a two-year assignment to its Paris office. He never returned, becoming deeply involved with the Middle East and particularly with trying to help to achieve peace with some measure of justice for the Palestinians. He was in Madrid in October 1991 to contribute ideas for the Palestinian speeches delivered at the conference which launched the "peace process," in Cairo in April/May 1994 as a legal advisor to the Palestinian negotiating team which negotiated the Gaza/Jericho Withdrawal Agreement (the first "post-Oslo" agreement) with Israel and near Camp David in July 2000, when the "peace process" effectively ended, to be available to provide legal advice on any documents which emerged from the Arafat/Barak/Clinton summit. (None did.) Since 1988, his articles on behalf of Middle East peace have been published more than 450 times in more than 70 different Arab, Israeli and international newspapers, magazines, journals and books, including, in the American press, in the Chicago Tribune, the Christian Science Monitor, the Dallas Morning News, the International Herald Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, Middle East Insight, Middle East Policy, The Nation, the Washington Post, the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs and the Washington Times.