ABSTRACT
Israel's conduct of foreign policy has earned considerable censure over the years, with many critics lending support from afar to voices of dissatisfaction inside Israel. Standard critiques of Israel's diplomatic performance are of four types: biased to begin with, normative, largely impressionistic, or empirical. Israeli politics arid policymaking contribute to the conduct of secret statecraft through the role of dominant personalities, government by coalition, and the special features of bureaucratic politics. Quiet diplomacy in the era of the National Unity Government to a large extent came to center on the person of Shimon Peres. The foundations for Israel's heavy emphasis on secret foreign relations are situational, domestic and to some extent a function of personality. There is also, finally, an important historical dimension. The foreign relations of Israel are predictably shortsighted, undirected, less than subtle and, lastly, judging from the diplomatic record, unimaginative.
