For nearly three decades, Richard Engel has waged an adventurous but often nerve-wracking existence as a print and television journalist chronicling life in the Middle East.
The chief foreign correspondent for NBC News, Engel is known for having covered the Iraq War, Arab Spring, and Syrian Civil War.
On Monday, he shared some of his hard-won insights into the complicated and war-torn region with a Palm Beach Civic Association audience of more than 200 people at the Breakers.
Engel was keynote speaker at the Civic Association’s annual Community Service Award Breakfast. Michael Pucillo, the Civic Association’s chairman and chief executive officer, interviewed Engel in a club-chair format.
President Trump’s proposal to relocate Gaza Palestinians into neighboring countries would face fierce opposition from Gaza residents, Engel said.
“The majority of Palestinians have said they don’t want to leave because if they do leave, they’ll never come back,” Engel said.
Trump said Monday that Palestinians would have no right to return under his proposal for U.S. “ownership” of the Gaza Strip.
Engel said there is widespread doubt that Trump’s proposal will happen.
“I don’t think it’s realistic,” he said. “I can’t imagine American troops from a volunteer army are going to be ordered there and marching people off destroyed land … into countries that don’t want to accept them. So, I don’t see it as practical.”
Engel was asked by Pucillo if the two-state solution is still a viable path to peace in the region. He replied: “I think we’re the furthest away that I have ever seen.”
Engel said that leaves a “one-state solution” that many Palestinians prefer provided they would be granted full Israeli citizenship.
But a lot of Israelis are afraid of sharing their country with Palestinians and don’t want to change the nature of the Jewish state. That’s especially true in the aftermath of Hamas’s October 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel and more than a year of brutal warfare.
“There’s not a spirit of sharing and trying to reach consensus, especially not right now,” Engel said.
If there were a one-state solution, what would that state look like? Engel envisions three alternatives: Broken and a failure. United, but no longer a fully Jewish state. Or one Jewish state with the Palestinians transferred out of the area.
The latter scenario “would be and look as ugly as it sounds,” Engel said.
Iran is significantly weakened by the Gaza war, which has decimated its proxies, Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, while eliminating Syria as a transit route for Iranian weapons to reach Hezbollah, Engel said.
“Iran’s ability to project power is tremendously diminished,” he said. “That makes Iran feel very vulnerable … With that changed dynamic … I think it’s very possible the U.S. and Israel will do some sort of intervention to Iran’s [nuclear] facilities this year.”
Engel’s next stop is Ukraine, where he says peace with Russia would come at a great price. Putin wants 20 percent of Ukraine’s territory and for Ukraine to agree to stay out of NATO and to be disarmed going forward. Ukraine wants a large army and missile defense system to defend itself against a future invasion.
Acquiescence to Russian demands “would be a disaster” for Ukraine’s security, Engel said.
“Russia really believes Ukraine should not exist” as a nation, he said. “They see Ukraine as an accident of history.”
Engel has written several books, including And Then All Hell Broke Loose: Two Decades in the Middle East (2016), packed with close-up observations of life in the tumultuous region.
Engel, 51, is from New York City. After graduating from Stanford University in 1996, he bought a one-way ticket to Cairo, stuffed $2,000 cash in a money belt and a sock, bid his parents farewell and launched his career as a freelance print journalist.
He craved the excitement of a journalism career, and said he chose the Middle East because he wanted to cover the defining international story of his generation. Three decades later, he’s still there.
“The whole reason you get into journalism is so you can be at these inflection points of history,” he said.
Brooks Community Service Award
Each year at the award breakfast, the Civic Association honors recipients of its annual William J. “Bill” Brooks Community Service Award for outstanding service to the community.
The award is named for the late Palm Beach Town Council member and former general manager of WPTV Channel 5.
This year’s honorees were John Scarpa and Tim Moran, co-founders and chairman and vice chairman, respectively, of the Palm Beach Police & Fire Foundation. Since its founding in 2006, the non-profit organization has raised millions of dollars to benefit the town’s public safety departments and first responders.
Scarpa and Moran are the 16th and 17th recipients since the inception of the Brooks Award in 2011.
Monday’s breakfast was sponsored by The Fanjul Family and Florida Crystals, which has underwritten the program each year since 2018. Florida Crystals was represented by Pepe Fanjul Jr., the company’s executive vice president and a Civic Association director since 2016.
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