Almost immediately after Israel declared its independence on May 14, 1948, France embarked on what amounted to a policy of military and scientific cooperation with the new state. Yet the official position of the French government at that time was pro-Arab, designed to maintain some measure of French influence in the Arab heartland, while under the terms of the Tripartite Declaration of 1950 France was obligated to abide by a limitation on arms supplies to the Middle East. Such French-Israeli cooperation also ran counter to the predilections of Israel’s timorous and tradition-bound Foreign Ministry. Wedded to their pre-independence ties with...

After a century or more of fierce competition with the British for hegemony in the region, France effectively ceased to be a Middle East power at the close of the second world war. In 1946 pressures from Great Britain and the United States forced France’s retreat from Syria and Lebanon, where a long tradition of trade and the “civilizing mission” of its educational and religious ties had created permanent enclaves of French culture. At the same time France came under increasingly agonizing pressures for independence in the Arab West, where it had been installed for more than a century.

With...

In the years immediately after World War II, France’s relations with the nascent State of Israel were curiously irregular. On an official diplomatic level, the French government was often cool, if not hostile to aspirations for a Jewish State, though many high officials within the government actively supported the Jewish struggle for independence. Powerful links had been forged out of the Nazi occupation, when Frenchmen developed a new knowledge and understanding of the Jewish people and their role in history. Because of their exploits within theRésistanceand in the Free French Forces, large numbers of Jews could count on...

The nature of government under the Fourth Republic had enabled influential French politicians in the defense establishment to strengthen Israel in accordance with their own view of Middle East necessities. When the Suez crisis developed, its most profound effect was to transform the special relationship between France and Israel into official policy. What had begun as a series of informal, unofficial, and unorthodox contacts, ripened into a full military alliance as Israel’s strongly centralized leadership asserted its policy of active defense. Of course, at no time was it a question of a formal state-to-state alliance. Nonetheless, commitments were made so...

From October 22 to 27, 1956, French matériel was rushed to Israel in preparation for the Sinai Campaign and the Suez invasion. Much of the equipment was lent for the duration of the campaign without an inventory having been taken, according to General Ely. Some equipment was an outright gift, while some was paid for at commercial rates.¹ Some twenty-four or twenty-five additional Mystéres, two French NATO Mystére squadrons and one of Sabrejets, under General Raymond Brohon, brought to over one hundred the total number of planes either sold or loaned to Israel in the months prior to Sinai.² On...

Immediately after the Socialists’ defeat in France on May 22, 1957, the overt political and diplomatic alliance with Israel seemed to wither. In Israel, the unwritten alliance was now rarely mentioned in the press, while, in France, the political instability which followed the demise of the Mollet government was bound to increase the freedom with which the Quai d’Orsay’s traditionally pro-Arab diplomats discharged day-to-day foreign policy. Support for Israel was confined to relatively ineffectual pro-Israel pressure groups such as theAlliance France-Israël,which had been organized in November 1956 under the presidency of Jacques Soustelle. Many prominent political figures were...

With the fall of the Mollet government in May 1957, the almost complete identification of interests that had characterized French relations with Israel during the Socialists’ government ceased to exist. It became apparent that French political and diplomatic support for Israel would henceforth be confined to a few narrow areas. The continuation of earlier patterns of governmental behavior, however, enabled the defense establishments of France and Israel independently to broaden their contacts in the fields of military technology and atomic research as long as the architects of the tacit alliance remained in power in the armed forces and the Defense...

With a return to orthodox diplomacy, the relationship between France and Israel was no longer based on sentiment but was transformed into a more commercial affair. The continued sale of arms and aircraft was thought necessary for the expansion of the French aerospace industry and the concomitant economic growth of France. On the one hand, de Gaulle was motivated by a desire to close the “technological gap” between France and the United States. He argued that a modern aerospace industry was essential to the technological advancement which would make France a major industrial power despite its lack of raw materials....

If shim’on peres had been the architect of the partnership with France under the Fourth Republic, it was Ben Gurion who bound Israel to the Fifth. The Israeli Premier was as Gaullist as de Gaulle in his suspicion of United State’ involvement in world and Arab affairs and in his distaste for American arms policies. Throughout his long tenure he operated in a Gaullist manner, limiting debate and making major policy decisions, although he did at the same time allow his assistants in the defense establishment wide latitude at the operational level.¹ Ben Gurion’s replacement with Levi Eshkol in 1963...

As events moved toward a new Arab-Israeli confrontation in 1967, General de Gaulle remained silent during the series of crises that preceded the outbreak of hostilities.¹ Some observers felt that he was trying to preserve his impartiality because he hoped eventually to be called upon to mediate the dispute. As if to underscore de Gaulle’s position, Herve Alphand, Secretary General of the Foreign Ministry, was careful to signal his country’s nonalignment in regional affairs at a conference of French ambassadors to Middle East countries held in Beirut on May 11.² Tensions heightened during the month, and, following the troop mobilizations...

The tacit alliance between France and Israel was a peculiar arrangement between two states whose interests ran parallel for a time, then diverged. While it reflected some of the principal aspects of an alliance, in many respects it differed from the normal patterns of international politics. Alliances are essentially military arrangements based on reciprocity or interdependence. In an unequal alliance, the stronger partner will usually guarantee the security of the weaker in exchange for some form of political support or subordination, strategic advantage or economic benefits. Military support was indeed at the core of the France-Israel relationship, but there was...