"The role of director-general of the foreign ministry was a professional and personal peak in all the years that I served on the diplomatic front."
By HERB KEINONUpdated: OCTOBER 13, 2016 13:56DORE GOLD: ‘This has probably been the busiest season for Israel’s foreign policy in decades.’ ((photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
Foreign Ministry Director-General Dore Gold announced on Thursday that he was leaving his position because of "personal issues."Gold, who has been a close confidant of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the last 25 years, was appointed by the premier in June 2015.Gold thanked Netanyahu for the confidence he placed in him in selecting him for the position and said that he will continue to be at his service for any mission that is placed on him."The role of director-general of the foreign ministry was a professional and personal peak in all the years that I served on the diplomatic front," he said.Gold added that during his tenure there had been a flowering of diplomatic relations and he has been proud to be a part of it.The American-born Gold is considered one of Netanyahu’s top foreign policy advisers. He served as one of his foreign policy advisers starting in 1996, during the prime minister’s first term in office, being appointed the following year as ambassador to the UN, where he served until 1999. In 2014, he became an “outside” consultant in the Prime Minister’s Office.In recent years, Gold has accompanied Netanyahu on many of his trips to Washington and the UN, and over the years has been one of Israel’s foremost unofficial spokesmen, speaking in the media and at conferences around the world on Israeli policy. He is often sought out by journalists and diplomats because of his knowledge of the issues, and because he is considered to be close to Netanyahu, thus reflecting his thinking.He has also been very active in lobbying policy-makers on behalf of “defensible borders” for Israel.