Almost 20 years ago, when Israel's Attorney-General Elyakim Rubinstein first set foot in Hong Kong, it was as chief of staff to the foreign minister, Moshe Dayan.
It was a time of optimism, when Israel had just signed a peace treaty with Egypt, its first with an Arab country and one in which Mr Rubinstein had played a key role.
Dayan was travelling around Asia trying to build on the international goodwill - at least in the non-Muslim world - that the treaty had generated. Israel was on a diplomatic sales mission, trying to strengthen its links with its few friends in Asia and forge new ones with countries that had traditionally been hostile.
But it was not until Mr Rubinstein's next visit to Asia in 1992, that some of what Dayan started finally came to fruition. By then he was travelling with the Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, to establish full diplomatic relations with China.
Perhaps Mr Rubinstein's crowning glory as a diplomat, however, was the signing of the peace treaty with Jordan in 1994, after leading the Israeli negotiating team for almost four years.
Both Dayan and Rabin are now dead, the latter assassinated by a Jewish religious fanatic opposed to the Oslo peace accords with the Palestinians, and Israel's new right-wing Government is less eager to force the pace of the peace process.
As a diplomat, civil servant and judge, Mr Rubinstein gives no indication of where he stands personally on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's approach.
