Dr. Tal Becker  serves as the legal advisor of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and has been a senior member of the Israeli peace negotiation team in successive rounds of peace negotiations. Most recently, he was the head of the Israeli legal team that was instrumental in negotiating and drafting the Peace Treaty between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. He has years of experience on the front lines of many of Israel's most pressing diplomatic, legal and policy challenges as a veteran negotiator, and key behind the scenes representative for Israel, in a wide variety of contexts. Among numerous previous positions, Dr. Becker has been a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, senior policy advisor to Israel's Minister of Foreign Affairs, a lead negotiator and drafter in the "Annapolis" and "Kerry" peace talks, director of the International Law Department at the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, counsel to Israel's UN Mission in New York, and an international law expert for the Israel Defense Forces.  He is also a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem where he leads educational initiatives on Israel and the Jewish world. In this capacity, he is a leading member of the Institute's Engaging Israel series which is the premier educational program on Israel engagement in North America, that is working to strengthen and re-imagine the relationship between Israel and World Jewry.  He is the recipient of numerous scholarly awards, including the Rabin Peace Prize and the 2007 Guggenheim Prize for best international law book,  Terrorism and the State.   He earned his Ph.D.  from Columbia University.