The head of the United Nations nuclear body is visiting Israel in an attempt to "promote the concept of a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East".
Mr Mohamed ElBaradei is hoping get Israel to begin talks on ridding the Middle East of nuclear weapons, whether it admits to having them or not, when he flies to the Jewish state today.
Under its policy of so-called "strategic ambiguity", Israel neither admits nor denies having nuclear weapons. International experts believe Israel has up to 200 warheads based on estimates of the amount of plutonium its reactors have produced.
A diplomat close to the International Atomic Energy Agency said on this occasion Mr ElBaradei would not be pushing Israel to abandon its "strategic ambiguity" policy, which Israel has made clear would be impossible.
Mr ElBaradei is to meet senior Israeli officials such as Prime Minster Ariel Sharon and Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom.
Israel is the only country in the Middle East that has not signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, meaning it is not obligated to show or declare its nuclear facilities or activities to UN inspectors.
During his visit, Mr ElBaradei is to tour Israel's atomic facilities - except for the reactor at the desert town of Dimona, where independent experts believe the Jewish state has produced plutonium.
Israeli nuclear whistleblower Mr Mordechai Vanunu, freed in April after an 18-year jail term for treason, once worked as a Dimona technician. Mr Vanunu took 60 photographs inside the reactor
and gave them to Britain's
Sunday Timesnewspaper in 1986.