Charles de Gaulle on Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Six-Day War
From "C'était de Gaulle"
On Israeli nuclear weapons
CDG: “Having or not having the ability to launch an atomic bomb, that changes everything. Do you know when the Americans decided to recognize Israel, which they had refused until then? Since they learned that Israel had its bomb. Even if it hasn't tested it, it possesses it. And it is we who provided it1!”
“Naturally, keep all this to yourself.”
On the Six Day War
The spring of 1967 ends in the Middle East with the Six-Day War.
Already in the spring of 1966, Malraux, returning from Egypt where he had gone to prepare the Tutankhamun exhibition, had brought back the impression of a furnace. It was vintage Malraux, whom de Gaulle, as fascinated as the newest of his secretaries of state, listened to intently.
Council of April 13, 1966.
Malraux: “Egypt is discovering that its past is not only Saladin, but Ramses. The Romans destroyed Gaul before rebuilding it, but France would not be what it is if it had not been Gallic before being Roman. The Egyptians too are discovering themselves as children of their past. They are discovering themselves as pharaonic, and thanks to the endorsement of Paris.”
“I saw Nasser. He no longer believes in the Third World. Does the Third World still exist, when one can bomb Vietnam with impunity every morning? The Third World is ineffectiveness. The Arab League is dead. How could it exist? It has no common enemy. Not even Israel.”
“Israel has an insane war budget, which makes it the inevitable satellite of those who help it. Israel is a thorn in Egypt's side.”
“Egypt? Nasser sees it beset by its demographics. How to put it into the heads of peasant women that pills exist, and into the heads of peasants that tractors exist? Nasser had believed that he would build Egypt on a party. He did not know how to build the party, and his only structure is the army. But if the army must be employed in exercises against Israel, it cannot at the same time be the leaven in the dough. He told me: ‘I have made a country, I have not made a state.’”
“Nasser has not been able to achieve an improvement in the standard of living. As for culture… In a village near Aswan, I saw a magnificent house of culture, but nothing inside, just poor photos. A house of culture was built, but not what was needed for it to exist.”
“For Nasser's Egypt, France is two things: the French Revolution, and the fascination with your person and your destiny.”
“Why the French Revolution, and not the Russian Revolution? Because Egypt's problems are those of France in 1788, not those of Russia in 1916.”
CDG: “You mean their proletariat is not industrial?”
Malraux (interrupted in his momentum, agrees with a grunt and becomes more practical): “Nasser would very much like to receive you in Egypt and to come to France. He told me: ‘French parliamentarians visiting Cairo assured me that I would be well received. By General de Gaulle, I am certain. But by the others?’”
CDG: “The others? Who is that? Is he afraid of Guy Mollet?”
Council of May 24, 1967.
A crisis that strongly risks leading to war is unfolding. “It began,” Couve reminds us, “with incidents between Syria and Israel. Syria invoked the protection of Russia, which assured it. On top of that, Nasser sought to challenge the free passage in the Gulf of Aqaba, which in fact means the transport of Iranian oil to the Israeli port of Eilat. To do this, he obtained from U Thant the withdrawal of the ‘blue helmets’ deployed on Egyptian territory; he pushed his troops to the border; and on May 22, he decided and implemented the blockade of the gulf.”
CDG: “Will the Israelis break the blockade by force? We should not encourage them to do so. An open conflict in the Middle East would be an absurdity, which we must first try to avert.”
“Then, we must promote a settlement. Our position is that the responsibility for peace in the East, as in Vietnam, as in Cyprus, belongs to the four powers. We must call on them to consult. This is what the British are doing by sending Thomson to Washington and Brown to Moscow. But the difference is that we do not take a position on the substance in advance.”
“In 1957, France made a declaration. But at that time, it was still very much affected by the misfortune of the Suez expedition and very inclined to blindly embrace Israeli causes. Since then, things have changed.”
Couve: “The difficulty will be to bring the Russians to the consultation. So far, they have systematically evaded it.”
CDG: “That is why we must intensify our action in the interest of peace. We will only take on responsibilities of war if there is war. As for the reasons given for resorting to it, we do not believe that the supply of Iranian oil to Israel is a matter of life or death for it.”
Council of June 2, 1967.
Couve shows how, in one week, the situation has dangerously escalated.
“The Arab front has consolidated, with Jordan joining Syria and Egypt. Yesterday, two hardline ministers joined the Israeli government: Begin and Dayan. Russia continues to refuse a Four-Power consultation, even if it does not appear to be pushing for war. The problem is to know what Israel's final attitude will be, which is currently losing. Will it react with arms, as its public opinion wishes?”
The General takes the floor, punctuating his speech with silences. He gives his remarks a grave tone that does not deceive. His statement will not be just for us:
“1. We have no commitment in this matter, to anyone. Things have changed since 1957” (in clear terms: we are no longer allies of Israel).
“2. Each of the states involved has the right to live, including Israel.”
“3. The worst would be the opening of hostilities. Whoever opens fire, wherever it may be, will have neither our approval nor our support.”
“4. There are problems: that of the Gulf of Aqaba, which will not be resolved by legal formulas; the problem of refugees, never settled since 1947; the problems of neighborliness” (he must be thinking mainly of Jerusalem). “These problems cannot be settled on the internal level. They must be settled on the international level, which implies the agreement of the Four. This is what we have said; and we maintain our position. It is based on international law. If international law is violated by everyone, well, there will be war.”
From the beginning of the afternoon, the AFP disseminates the written version that de Gaulle gives to Gorse after the Council, which causes consternation in an Israel at the height of excitement:
“France is not committed in any way or on any subject with any of the states involved. On its own initiative, it considers that each of these states has the right to live. But it believes that the worst outcome would be the opening of hostilities. Consequently, the state that first uses arms, wherever it may be, will have neither its approval nor, even more so, its support. In the event that the current situation of expectation could be maintained and a de facto easing of tensions occurs as a result, the problems posed by navigation in the Gulf of Aqaba, the situation of Palestinian refugees, and the neighborly relations of the interested states should be fundamentally resolved by international decisions.”
Council of June 7, 1967.
The Council meets as the war, which began at dawn on Monday, June 5, is in its third day, and already, on the military front, the battle is won by Israel: the tank battle in the Sinai is going in its favor, the Egyptian air force is destroyed, Gaza is taken, the Jordanian army is hastily evacuating the West Bank.
CDG: “We proposed that the Four Great Powers meet. The Russians did not accept and must be regretting it. The Israelis have obviously taken the initiative, and as the operations unfolded, the Russians changed their attitude. Here are the messages I exchanged with Kosygin on the hotline.”
(He reads them to us)
“Now, where do we stand? Nothing is settled. A series of negotiations will open. But we will remain the champions of consultation among the Four, with a view to examining practical problems: the refugees, navigation in the Gulf of Aqaba, neighborly relations. We must reach an agreement guaranteed by the Four.”
“Mr. Couve will speak to the Assembly this afternoon; the opposition would have been better inspired to choose someone other than Mr. Guy Mollet to respond to him.”
Indeed, according to the rules, the “statement without debate” that Couve makes to the Assembly will be followed by only one intervention, which will be handled by the man who wanted and botched the Suez expedition in 1956…
Council of June 15, 1967.
The guns have fallen silent. Couve takes stock of “this extremely grave international crisis that will last a long time”: “The Arabs, in the bitterness of their defeat, can only harden their attitude. Russia, which has suffered a diplomatic defeat, is encouraging the Arabs in their hardening, to restore its prestige. Israel intends to dispense with the help of the United Nations.”
CDG: “I would like the French, in this matter, to see their national interest above all. When we advocated for moderation, the Arabs listened to us. Not the Israelis, whom we had nevertheless warned against the initial military successes that their armament, experience, cohesion, and situation on the ground assured them. I had warned Abba Eban with the utmost clarity in our meeting on May 24.”
“Today, the fact of their victory is there. But we cannot accept to endorse territorial conquests. The Israelis will not want to give up Gaza, nor Sharm el-Sheikh, nor the expanses of the Sinai, nor the banks of the Jordan, nor the heights of the Golan. But the Arabs cannot accept these conquests. So there is an armistice, but not peace.”
“The spectacle of Arab refugees dying of thirst and without recourse is tragic. There is a real Arab ghetto in Gaza. The moral and political consequences of the drama will weigh heavily.”
“At the Security Council, we maneuvered wisely. There will be the General Assembly, where there will be enormous emotion, especially in the Third World. It will not be pleasant for the Americans. We did well to accept this meeting first. There needed to be an outlet.”
“This Middle East drama has reopened a period of cold war that can go very far.”
“For oil and the canal, there are serious practical issues.”
“As for the future, we have no reason to take sides, whatever the sentiments. Peace will not be recovered for a very long time, because it will not be for a very long time that the states in question will come closer together. The Israelis have nothing to ask of us and we have nothing to give them. We will strive, on the other hand, to the appropriate extent, to morally assist the Arabs and to keep their painfully regained confidence.”
“Then, there is French public opinion! It does not encourage us! This is not new. Whenever a serious international political issue is at stake, the French have never seen it right at the beginning. But one does not make policy by following public opinion. Opinion always ends up rallying to a policy, provided that it is good.”
Council of June 21, 1967.
For once, it is Pompidou who summarizes the international situation, as Couve is in the Middle East. Kosygin, en route to the United Nations, passed through Paris.
“While affirming his desire for peace, and without excluding the possibility that the Four could play a role in the interest of peace, he took a very hard line on the withdrawal of the Israelis. He violently attacked the overall policy of the United States. In fact, the Russians are in a difficult position. And the Chinese, by detonating their first thermonuclear bomb, are adding to their difficulties.”
CDG: “Kosygin is engaged in a colossal operation that encompasses the entire world. He is measured in his judgments, not excited, but very determined in the face of the Americans. He informed us in advance of his position at the United Nations. He warned us of his refusal to accept Johnson's invitation to visit him in Washington. In reality, the fact of the war is spreading across the world. The origin, the cause, is the American intervention in Vietnam, a massive and bloody intervention, but inevitably sterile.”
“It is from this that the shock of the H-bomb in China emerged, and the acceleration of Chinese armaments. It is from this that the Middle East crisis was born, with the Israelis betting on the Americans and the Arabs on the Russians.”
“For us, we have firmly taken a position against the American intervention in Vietnam and against the war in the Middle East. We have found the Israelis to be in the wrong, as they initiated the hostilities. We consider the military results obtained on the ground to be null and void. Otherwise, if these acts of war are endorsed, it will lead to a world war.”
“As for a peaceful settlement in the Middle East, it will only become possible at the cost of the global event that will be the end of the war in Vietnam with the departure of the Americans. Then, we will actively participate in an agreement of the Four on a peace settlement in the Middle East. To preserve this possibility, we must avoid all ideological or sentimental entanglements. This is what our representative will say at the United Nations to situate the problem on its true terrain. And I would be surprised if this position does not receive general assent.”
Council of July 5, 1967.
But it must be acknowledged, the following week, that the United States succeeded in saving face at the United Nations General Assembly. Israel was not clearly condemned, except for the annexation of Jerusalem. President Johnson and Kosygin finally met, neither in New York nor in Washington, but halfway, on quasi-neutral ground, at a university in New Jersey. The conversations were as long as they were fruitless.
CDG: “Once again, we are witnessing the impotence of the UN. It adopted neither of the two resolutions presented. But even if the Yugoslav resolution, which we supported, had been voted on, it would not have changed anything. The Israelis would not have complied.”
“As for us, we have taken a position consistent with what we said in the secrecy of our discussions with the various parties.”
“The state of war continues. A direct settlement between the adversaries is out of the question. Certainly, the King of Jordan, a direct victim and the most reasonable at the same time, would not refuse, in the end, a conversation with Israel, but he is overwhelmed.”
“The international tension will therefore continue for a very long time.”
“Kosygin saw us on his return from the United States, as he had done on his way there. Regarding the major issues — Vietnam and the Middle East — he and Johnson agreed on nothing. They will, however, undoubtedly agree to intervene together on the only issue where they have a common interest: nuclear non-proliferation. At least they have convinced each other that they do not want to go to war.”
“I firmly believe in the necessity, for us French, to keep our hands free and to stick to simple positions. One does not make war. One respects the right of peoples to self-determination. For the rest, we must be ready.”
On November 27, 1967, in his press conference, he will dwell at length on this crisis.
Many only retained three qualifiers of the Jewish people, forgetting or pretending to forget their context. Before addressing the causes and consequences of the war, the General went back to the origins of the creation of a “Zionist home in Palestine,” and then of the State of Israel. Faced with this new fact, he evokes the “apprehensions” of some, and the confidence of others.
“Some even feared that the Jews, hitherto dispersed, but who had remained what they had always been, that is, an elite people, sure of themselves and dominating, would, once gathered in the site of their ancient grandeur, change their very moving wishes of the last nineteen centuries into ardent and conquering ambition.”
Such was the slope of apprehension. But de Gaulle also evokes the slope of confidence:
“A considerable capital of interest and even sympathy had accumulated in their favor, especially, it must be said, in Christendom; a capital that stemmed from the immense power of the Testament, nourished by all the sources of a magnificent liturgy, maintained by the commiseration inspired by their ancient misfortune and poeticized, among us, by the legend of the Wandering Jew, increased by the abominable persecutions they had suffered during the Second World War and augmented, since they had found a homeland, by their constructive works and the courage of their soldiers.”
How can one not see, through these lines, de Gaulle's admiration for this people of such long duration, for this history that resists all the seductions, reductions, and persecutions of History?
As for the three famous qualifiers, ah, how he would have liked to be able to apply them to the French people!
In October 1956, while secretly preparing a Franco-British attack from Cyprus against the Suez Canal, the Guy Mollet — Bourgès Maunoury government was pressing the Israelis to join the operation. They refused. The only reason that could persuade them was if France agreed to involve Israeli scientists in the research on the atomic bomb, which Pierre Mendès France had decided to push forward in December 1954. Guy Mollet, after a few days, accepted this condition. Israel not only entered the war in the days when the Franco-British forces halted their attack and withdrew without glory. Franco-Israeli cooperation for the military applications of the atom continued until the General learned of it. He stopped it immediately, just as he had denounced, at the beginning of June 1958, the Chaban-Delmas-Strauss agreement for Franco-German production of the atomic bomb.