Gilead Sher

Gilead Sher (Hebrew: גלעד שר; born 2 June 1953) is an Israeli attorney who served as Chief of Staff and Policy Coordinator to Israel's former Prime Minister and Minister of Defense, Ehud Barak.^[1] In that capacity he acted as one of Israel's senior peace negotiator in 1999–2001, at the Camp David summit in 2000 and the Taba talks in 2001, as well as in extensive rounds of covert negotiations with the Palestinians.^[2]

Sher was born on 2 June 1953 in Kibbutz Mahanayim, Israel.^[3] Sher, on his mother's side, is a descendant of the Sephardic Baruch Mizrachi family, which has resided in Jerusalem since 1620.^[4] On his father's side, Sher's grandfather, Avraham Sher (Ser) was killed in action as an Haganah combatant in beginning of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War in 1947 and his father Yoel Sher was an Israeli diplomat and ambassador. Sher is a graduate of the Hebrew University Law School and was admitted to the Israel Bar Association in 1981.^[5] He has also completed courses in project finance at the World Bank (1996) and at Harvard University (1999) as well as Battalion Commanders and Brigade Commanders courses in the Israel Defense Forces.^[6]

Alongside his law practice, Sher leads the Center for Applied Negotiations (CAN) at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv, ranked among the five leading think tanks in the Middle East, which he joined in 2012 as a senior research fellow.

Sher started his career as a news editor and radio news presenter for Kol Yisrael, where he subsequently served as a parliamentary and legal correspondent, and was the radio's correspondent in Paris from 1981 to 1983.

Sher founded the law firm Gilead Sher & Co. (Originally Klimist and Sher Law Offices) in 1989. The firm has offices in both Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Between 2005 and 2010, as a result of a merger, Sher became a senior founding partner at Aaronsohn, Sher, Aboulafia, Amoday and Co., which was ranked amongst Israel's 20 largest law firms. His main fields of expertise are corporate law, project finance, constitutional and administrative law, international business ventures, investments and transactions, dispute resolution and both private and public international law , negotiations and dispute resolution. He has also been involved as counsel in a number of State Inquiry Commissions.^[1]

From 2001 to 2011, Sher taught annually as a guest lecturer at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. His lectures focused on dispute resolution and negotiations in times of crisis.^[7] In 2007-2013 Sher also taught at the Tel Aviv University as an adjunct professor, delivering seminars at the international and local M.A. programs in conflict resolution and mediation.^[8]

Sher was a visiting professor and Israel studies fellow at Georgetown University's Department of Government in 2019, and a lecturer on law at Harvard Law School in fall 2016.^[9]

Sher served as Chief of Staff of the Prime Minister and the Minister of Defense and was the PM's policy coordinator from 2000 to 2001.^[10]

Sher's involvement in Middle East peace efforts started during the tenure of the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, when as a reserve IDF colonel he was appointed to the negotiation project at the Planning Directorate of the IDF and served as delegate to the talks on the Oslo Accords.^[10] He was later appointed by Israel's Prime Minister and Minister of Defense Ehud Barak in 1999 to negotiate the Sharm el-Sheikh Memorandum which was signed on 4 September 1999 between Israel and the PLO.^[11] He was subsequently appointed head of the negotiation team at the Camp David peace summit which was convened by former US President Bill Clinton.^[12]

Sher also served as a co-chief peace negotiator at the Taba peace talks of 2001, as well as in extensive rounds of covert peace negotiations with the Palestinians. Sher's efforts for peace were recognized by former US President Clinton who thanked him for his "heavy labor for a different future for your people and your neighbors".^[13] He was appointed Chevalier de l'Ordre national du Merite in 2002 by the former President of France, Jacques Chirac, as appreciation for his efforts to promote peace in the Middle East.^[14]

Sher gives an account of his involvement in the peace process in his book The Israeli-Palestinian Peace Negotiations 1999–2001, Within Reach which was published in Hebrew in 2001, translated into Arabic and published in English by Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group in 2006.^[15]

Gilead Sher served three consecutive 4-year terms (2013-2025) as chairman of the executive board of Sapir Academic College, one of the largest public colleges in Israel.^[9] The College, situated less than two miles from the Gaza border, plays a unique and vital role as anchor of resilience, vitality, and hope in the Western Negev and the Gaza Envelope. On a national level, the college is considered a beacon of growth and development. ^[16]

During Sher's tenure, most of it literally under fire in repetitive rounds of violent Israel-Hamas conflagrations, the College's carved its strategic objectives for the next decade: attaining university status, doubling the campus footprint with state-of-the-art facilities, deepening research, expanding knowledge, establishing new faculties, and strengthening Sapir’s economic foundation and relationships with local, regional and international partners.^[17]

In the aftermath of the October 7 2023 Hamas attack on Israel and the ensuing war, Sher has engaged in planning, research and policy analysis addressing the prospects for a post-war regional security and policy framework.^[18] He asserted that regional normalization, security and peace could not be achieved while bypassing the Palestinian issue altogether. ^[19]

One recent peer-reviewed article, “Revealing the zone of possible agreement between parties in conflict: An application to Israeli-Palestinian peace agreements,” co-authored by Sher and published in PNAS Nexus in January 2025, analyses data from before October 7 to model a “zone of possible agreement” between Israelis and Palestinians.^[20]

In commentary following the attack, Sher emphasised that the attack was a brutal and unequivocal refutation of the flawed premise of Middle East peace without addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Moreover, it “shocked Israeli society to its core” and underscored the importance of re-thinking feasible frameworks in light of changed public sentiment. ^[21][22]

Engaged in an intense "track 1.5" initiative and based on the product of the initiative, Sher co-authored in December 2024 for the Baker Institute A Framework for Middle East Security, Peace, and Normalization as a contribution to the ongoing discussion of how the conflict could be addressed through negotiations leading to enduring peace and security for both Israelis and Palestinians.^[23] The framework is characterized by inclusive, regional and international support for negotiations between the parties, as well as a benchmarked implementation and compliance process. Sher's and his partners' approach later resonated in both the French-Saudi Initiative^[24] and President Trump's Plan.^[25]

In recent years, Gilead Sher’s academic and policy engagement has increasingly focused on applying empirical research and behavioral insights to the study of conflict resolution and peace negotiations.^[26] His scholarship reflects a shift from his earlier role as a practitioner and chief negotiator in the Israeli–Palestinian peace process to that of an applied academic analyst examining the evolving dynamics of public opinion, trauma, and negotiation strategy in protracted conflicts.^[27]

Committed to securing Israel as the democratic nation-state of the Jewish People along the principles of the 1948 Declaration of Independence, Sher was the co-founder of the NGO Blue White Future.^[28] In late December 2022, he co-founded the Central Headquarters of the Pro-Democracy Resistance of Civil Society movements.^[29] During the first four months of the Gaza War, Sher served as coordinator between the intel and ops IDF directorate for the hostages held by Hamas and the families of the abducted hostages.^[30]

In December 2024, Sher presented new policy analysis at the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies conference titled “Prospects for Peace Following the 7th of October Attack.”^[31]

Sher’s recent research and public interventions demonstrate a growing emphasis on realpolitik and data-driven conflict analysis, combining quantitative modeling, behavioral economics, and negotiation theory.^[2]

This marks an evolution in his intellectual trajectory from direct political involvement in the 1990s and 2000s peace process to an informed evidence-based approach that seeks to understand why negotiations break down and how they might be revived under new conditions within a challenging reality, with emphasis on the MENA region as fundamental infrastructure, combining, inter alia, considerations relating to economy, energy, technology, security, climate and cyber.^[32]

Given the October 7 attack by Hamas and its aftermath, Sher’s work takes on increased urgency: he is considering how the attack has changed Israeli and Palestinian respective societies, negotiation leverage, and the structure of possible post-war agreements.^[4]

• Sher, Gilead (2006). The Israeli-Palestinian Peace Negotiations, 1999-2001: Within Reach. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-0-7146-8542-7.
• Sher, Gilead; Kurz, Anat (16 March 2016). Negotiating in Times of Conflict. Institute for National Security Studies. ISBN 978-965-550-574-0.
• Golan, Galia; Sher, Gilead (14 June 2019). Spoiling and Coping with Spoilers: Israeli-Arab Negotiations. Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-04239-2.
• Sher, Gilead (2022). Reflections on conflict resolution: in the Middle East and beyond. New Jersey: World Scientific. ISBN 978-981-12-5158-0.

• Cavatorta, Elisa; Groom, Ben; Sher, Gilead (23 December 2024). "Revealing the zone of possible agreement between parties in conflict: An application to Israeli-Palestinian peace agreements". PNAS Nexus. 4 (1). doi:10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae581. ISSN 2752-6542.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link)

• "Two States or One? Reappraising the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse". Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 18 September 2018. Retrieved 24 March 2026.
• Sher, Gilead; Rübcke, Johanna Rebecca (2022-08), "Anti-Semitism in Europe: Could Negotiation Tools Help the Combat?", Reflections on Conflict Resolution, WORLD SCIENTIFIC, pp. 31–48, ISBN 978-981-12-5158-0, retrieved 2026-03-24 {{citation}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)CS1 maint: work parameter with ISBN (link)

• Gilead Sher on Twitter
• The Israeli-Palestinian Peace Negotiations, 1999-2001 Within Reach