Avigdor Lieberman is a man on many missions. Over the last few months, he has traveled far and wide, journeying to many areas of the world that have not ever seen, nor for a very long time, been graced with the presence of an Israeli Foreign Minister. 

In July, Lieberman was in South America.  While there he met with high ranking officials from Brazil, Argentina, Colombia and Peru. According to the JTA, the trip covered a great deal of diplomatic ground "ranging from economic cooperation to the Iranian nuclear threat", to the commemoration of the anniversary of the Buenos Aires Jewish Community Center bombing in 1994 which killed 85 people.

Earlier this month, sub-Saharan Africa (specifically, Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria and Uganda) and Ethiopia were the ports of call. Lieberman led a delegation that included representatives from private and state owned weapons manufacturers, as well as economic, development and water experts. Discussions covered a range of topics from weapons deals to Iran, water/irrigation projects and HIV prevention. In Nigeria, Lieberman signed a memorandum of understanding with ECOWAS, an important regional group of African states that works to promote economic integration across a range of areas.

In his most recent trip to the Balkans, Lieberman held meetings with the leaders of Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro. As EU prospects these countries are being actively cultivated by Israel for political and economic purposes.

To give a little perspective to these trips, the last time an Israeli Foreign Minister visited sub-Saharan Africa was 18 years ago and South America 22 years. Lieberman's visit to the three Balkan nations is the first ever by an Israeli Foreign Minister. Arguably, according to Lieberman these locales "did not receive adequate attention in the past" but are now front and center for the Israeli Foreign Minister. Why this change and why now?

Lieberman claims it is a strategy to re-focus the Foreign Ministry on overlooked areas of Israeli engagement, and away from Israel-Palestinian and Israel-Arab diplomatic matters. According to Lieberman, "one of the foreign ministry's mistakes was to turn itself into a ministry for Palestinian affairs" [and] "I have no intention of doing that, no plans for obsessive engagement." In comparison, as Foreign Minister, Lieberman's predecessor Tzipi Livni, maintained an in-depth negotiating track with Palestinian negotiator Ahmed Qureia just one year ago.

There are likely numerous reasons for Lieberman's lack of involvement in Israel-Palestinian diplomacy, including the fact that Lieberman himself is a settler who lives in the West Bank settlement of Nokdim, and he has repeatedly dismissed current efforts to launch negotiations as naïve. But it is unlikely Lieberman would be able to effectively engage in Mideast diplomacy, even if he wanted to. Lieberman is definitely somebody to whom nations are not tripping over to roll out the red carpet to. And some countries have been openly hostile to him.

But not only is Lieberman not involved in Israel-US and Israel-Arab discussions-he may even be hiding from them. The pattern is clear. Lieberman's 10 day jaunt through South America coincided with the visits of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, National Security Advisor Jim Jones and Middle East envoy George Mitchell to Israel. The current trip to the Balkans overlapped with Mitchell's meeting on September 15th with Prime Minister Netanyahu. This has become almost a predictable pattern; if Mitchell or another high ranking US official is in town, Lieberman is either out of town or on his way out of town. As Kevin Peraino in Newsweek reveals, "unofficially, Israeli wags suspect, his mission is to stay out of the way."

In October 2008, Lieberman famously said that Egyptian President Mubarak can "go to hell." On the heels of this remark, President Shimon Peres and outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered effusive apologies to Mubarak.  In a meeting in April of this year with Egyptian Intelligence Chief Omar Suleiman in Jerusalem, according to Yediot Acharonoth, the Egyptians demanded five things apropos a meeting with Lieberman:

An apology from Lieberman about his verbal attacks on Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak; a statement from Lieberman about the importance of Egypt and the strategic ties between the two countries; the meeting must be held in the Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem and not in the Foreign Ministry building; the fact of the meeting must be kept secret until the last minute; [And] the media must be kept away from the meeting.

After the meeting there were conflicting accounts of whether an invitation was extended to Lieberman to visit Cairo. 

One nation Lieberman has been successful in making diplomatic inroads with is Russia. In his first trip to Russia as Foreign Minister, Lieberman, born in the former U.S.S.R. Republic of Moldova, had many high-level meetings and was warmly received. As the Center for American Progress' Matt Yglesias points out, this could be a ploy to use access to Russia to threaten a weakening of the US-Israeli alliance, or to try to flip Russia away from its support for Iran. The US and Israel are long standing allies, with multiple strategic, military, social and political linkages and relationships. However, Lieberman may be the right man to try to get a little something out of the Russians. In essence, as Yglesias notes, the general perception of Lieberman is:

The head of a quasi-fascist party elected on a platform of racial animosity isn't a helpful front man for Israeli policies in the United States, he isn't helpful in Western Europe, and he certainly isn't helpful in Cairo or Ankara. But that's not the kind of thing that would bother Vladimir Putin.

Though his connection to his former homeland might pay potential dividends, Lieberman, as Peraino writes in Newsweek is "considered an embarrassing loose cannon by large swaths of the Israeli public, [and] has never been taken particularly seriously in diplomatic circles."

Earlier this week, Laura Rozen at Politico reported that Lieberman extended an invitation to Secretary of State Clinton to hold a so-called "strategic dialogue" in Israel in October. The last such meeting occurred in 2007 and was described by the State Department in general terms, as an effort "to strengthen the already close strategic cooperation between our two countries." Notably, the 2007 meeting was led by then-U.S. Undersecretary of State Nick Burns and then-Israeli Minister of Transportation Shaul Mofaz, and did not include the participation of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice or Foreign Minister Livni. Rozen reports that Clinton has "provisionally accepted the invitation."

Whether the proposed "strategic dialogue" will be more than a photo-op for Lieberman is not yet clear. But given his complete irrelevance in key diplomatic efforts thus far, it is doubtful Lieberman will begin playing any constructive role on critical foreign affairs issues.  Of course it is also questionable how long Lieberman will last as Foreign Minister. He is under serious investigation for corruption, with an indictment in the works. Then again, in Israel, many politicians are under investigation or indictment.

With David Halperin

This post originally appeared in the Mideast Peace Pulse