About Our Conference on Israel's China Policy
When it comes to the Middle East; China & Israel have several issues of mutual policy concern on their docket. There are questions of competition, including technology transfer and strategic investment. Then there are the regional challenges – ensuring stability; finding a resolution to the wars; protecting oil and gas shipments traveling through the Persian Gulf; preventing the nuclearization of Iran; and curbing the spread of separatism, extremism, and terrorism.
Could the Middle East become an area where Israel and China can cooperate in the face of their differences? What forms would such cooperation take? And, what role could partners play in facilitating such collaboration?
About Our Keynote Speaker: Efraim Halevy
Efraim Halevy was the ninth director of Mossad and the 4th head of the Israeli National Security Council. Above all, he is remembered for his part in bringing about the peace treaty with Jordan. The special relationship he developed with King Hussein made it possible for Halevy to open Jordan to the awareness that only a peace agreement with Israel would extricate the Hashemite kingdom from the crisis after the Gulf War.
Halevy was born in London to an established Orthodox Jewish family. He emigrated to Israel in 1948. In 1961, he began his work in the Mossad. In 1967, he was selected to the Chief Branches Forum. Halevy remained in the Mossad for the next 28 years, heading three different branches throughout. Between 1990-1995, under the directorship of Shabtai Shavit, he served as deputy director and as head of the headquarters branch. In 1996, he became the Israeli ambassador to the European Union in Brussels. In March 1998, he became the director of Mossad following the resignation of Danny Yatom.
Halevy served as the envoy and confidant of five Prime Ministers: Yitzhak Shamir, Yitzhak Rabin, Benjamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon. He took an active part in a special mission by Rabin in forging the Israel–Jordan Treaty of Peace. After the failure of the Mossad operation to assassinate Hamas leader Khaled Mashal in 1997, he took an active part in Benjamin Netanyahu's mission to return the Mossad men captured in Jordan, and to settle the crisis with the King of Jordan. In October 2002, he was appointed the second head of the National Security Council and an advisor to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Halevy is known as a hard-headed pragmatist on issues involving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, willing to ruffle feathers on the right and the left.
In 2006 he published the book Man in the Shadows, covering Middle Eastern history since the late 1980s. In January 27, 2007 an interview of his was published in Portugal, in which he stated "We are in the midst of a Third World War" with radical Islam, and predicted that it will take at least 25 years for the West to win. In November 2011 Halevy said Iran should be prevented from becoming a nuclear power but expressed opposition to an attack which he said "could affect not only Israel, but the entire region for 100 years." He added "The growing haredi radicalization poses a bigger risk than Ahmadinejad". Halevy has written extensively on Israel's relationship with the United States, generally taking a moderate, pragmatic view of the Washington-Jerusalem alliance. He wrote, for example: "Never, but NEVER surprise the president of the United States is a dictum I learned very quickly when entering the Mossad in 1961."
