Many commentators have been puzzled by the fact that a French-Israel rapprochement is taking place under a Socialist President. Le Figaro, for instance, wrote that there was something awkward about the hugs and mutual praise between a French Socialist and the leader of Israel’s right. This seeming awkwardness, however, only confirms that French Socialists are friendlier to Israel than their Gaullist counterparts.
When the Vichy regime replaced the Third Republic in July 1940, many in the French right rejoiced at what they dubbed “a divine surprise.” Vichy was a revenge for the “Republic of the Jews and Free-masons” and a return to “authentic French values.” Léon Blum, the French socialist leader who became France’s first Jewish Premier in 1936, was the very incarnation of what the French right hated about the Third Republic. Blum was also a Zionist who used his power and influence to obtain France’s 1947 vote in favor of the UN partition plan.
In fact, France led the international efforts for the partition of British Palestine and for a humanitarian solution to the tragedy of Holocaust survivors denied entry to Palestine by Britain. It was under Pierre Mendès-France, another Socialist premier (as well as a Jew), that France and Israel started developing a military relationship in the mid-1950s. This close relationship culminated in the Franco-Israeli military operation in Suez in 1956, when the Socialist Guy Mollet headed the French government.
When de Gaulle came back to power in 1958, he was determined to “correct the mistakes” of the Fourth Republic. While he himself never made anti-Semitic comments about “The Republic of the Jews and Free-Masons,” the French right welcomed the end of the Socialist-dominated Fourth Republic. For de Gaulle, the Fourth Republic’s decision to fight an Arab country together with Israel in 1956 was a terrible mistake, which ended in diplomatic humiliation. As soon as he came back to power, he significantly lowered the level of military cooperation with Israel.
With the end of the Algerian war in 1962, the underlying cause of the French-Israeli alliance (i.e. the two countries’ common animosity towards Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser) vanished. De Gaulle was determined to repair France’s strained ties with the Arab world. This policy was incompatible with France’s cooperation with Israel.
There was an additional reason for the widening gap between France and Israel under de Gaulle. While de Gaulle embarked on a confrontational foreign policy vis-à-vis the United States (a policy that culminated in France’s departure from NATO’s military command in 1966), the United States started reevaluating the pro-Arab policy of the Eisenhower Administration. With Nasser actively supporting anti-US forces in the Middle East, the US progressively ceased to consider Israel an impediment to its interests in the region. Because de Gaulle’s foreign policy had become so confrontational toward the US, it also became more confrontational toward Israel.
De Gaulle deeply resented “les Anglo-Saxons.” Humiliated by Churchill and Roosevelt during WWII, his policy of restoring France’s “grandeur” always had a flavor of revenge. Defying the United States became a central motto, and policy, of Gaullism.
De Gaulle’s conservative successors, Georges Pompidou and Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, championed France’s “Arab policy.” During the Yom Kippur War, Pompidou refused to allow the US airlift to Israel to cross French airspace. Giscard d’Estaing freed Abu Daoud (the mastermind of the massacre of the Israeli athletes in Munich), and he condemned the Israel-Egypt Camp David Agreements for not including the PLO.
François Mitterrand, the first Socialist President of the Fifth Republic, put an end to this outrageous policy. He was the first French president to pay an official visit to Israel. Because Mitterrand was not a Gaullist, he was not anti-American. Indeed, in 1991 he joined the US-led coalition in the Gulf War.
But Mitterrand’s Gaullist successor, Jacques Chirac, led an international anti-US diplomatic coalition during the 2003 Iraq war. Chirac vocally blamed Ehud Barak and absolved Yasser Arafat of the failure of the 2000 Camp David summit and the ensuing wave of terror. Chirac visited Arafat in hospital in Paris in 2004, and he had his coffin wrapped in a French flag. As for Nicolas Sarkozy, he was what French grammarians call “un faux ami.” The warmth of his words was only matched by the hostility of his deeds.
As a French Socialist, François Hollande does not share the anti-Zionist and anti-American ideology of Gaullism and of the aristocratic Quai d’Orsay. But, mostly, he realizes that France’s interests in the Middle East and Africa are threatened by Islamism and that the Obama Administration is unwilling to confront that threat militarily. Hence Hollande’s military intervention in Mali, hence his readiness (stopped by Obama) to intervene in Syria, and hence his unwillingness to appease Iran.
As opposed to John Kerry, François Hollande called upon both Israel and the Palestinians to make concessions for peace. While in Ramallah, he told Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to get real about the “right of return.” Hollande called for a halt to Israeli settlements but, when pressed by a French journalist, he refused to call them “illegitimate” (as Kerry repeatedly does). In sum, France today is tougher on Iran and more impartial on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute than the United States.
The self-proclaimed “realism” of the US Administration today is affecting both Israel’s security and French interests, just as it did in the 1950s. And, then as now, American miscalculations are creating strange bedfellows between Israeli nationalism and French socialism.
Dr. Emmanuel Navon heads the Political Science and Communication Department at the Jerusalem Orthodox College and teaches International Relations at Tel-Aviv University and the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center. He is a Senior Fellow at the Kohelet Policy Forum.
The strange bedfellowship lasted about a week.