30.03.2011                      24.Adar ll, 5771

Feature:

Quiet diplomacy in a raging storm

The Council on Foreign Relations remembers David Kimche, International Women’s Day is still being celebrated, and leading chefs cook up a kosher storm.

THE PUBLIC is sometimes unaware of quiet diplomacy with Arab states, but there are and have been contacts at different levels throughout all the years of Israel’s statehood.
Even now, with all the turmoil generated by uprisings across the Middle East, these contacts continue. At a memorial discussion on perspectives on the current maelstrom hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations in memory of its founding president, former Foreign Ministry director-general and deputy director of the Mossad David Kimche, current Foreign Ministry Director-General Rafi Barak disclosed that in recent weeks Israel has received a lot of calls from Arab countries – “those with which we have relations and those with which we don’t have relations” – to see where things are heading….