France Attitude To Israel

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31380, 27 May 1967, Page 13

France Attitude To Israel

(N.Z. Press Assn. —Copyright)

PARIS, May 26.

There is nothing new about the Palestine war which has intermittently simmered and blazed for 19 years, but there is something very new indeed about the frame of power politics now seeking'to contain that war, C. L. Sulzberger wrote in the “New York Times.”

Sulzberger said: Right after Israel’s creation, the United States, Britain and France became its guarantors. In 1950, they committed Middle Eastern status quo that had just been altered by the British departure from Palestine and the establishment of a Jewish State. Much, however, has happened since. The 1950 pledge never recovered its validity after Britain and France joined Israel in an attack on Egypt. Washington and London today base policy on the tripartite commitment but France plainly no longer considers it applicable. This switch in the French position has deprived Israel of important, support. There was no formal alliance, but France was Israel’s crucial source of modern armament and its ardent backer in world councils. The fifth Republic’s Middle East policy has changed radically from that of the Fourth Republic. It has distanced itself from Israel and drawn

closer to the Arab states. Where once it was unabashedly biased, Paris is now deliberately neutral in terms of the Palestine war. There are several reasons for this, apart from a global policy that has, in many respects. loosened French ties with its Western allies and created new bonds with Russia.

Post-War Sympathy There has been a distinct change in the emotional atmosphere. When the little Jewish State established its independence in the Palestine war’s first round, the Second World War had just ended and there was particular sympathy in France for the Jewish people who had suffered so terribly under the Nazis.

And, as France’s own Arab cancer, Algeria, grew ever more painful, there was growing dislike for President Nasser, who aided the Algerian nationalists, and equal admiration for his avowed enemy, Israel. After the Suez disaster in 1956 and de Gaulle’s return to power in 1958, the situation began to alter. De Gaulle deliberately removed the Algerian cancer from the French body politic, ending France’s personal quarrel with the Arabs.

At the same time, because the Israelis gave some help to the Organisation of Arab States conspiracy against both the Algerian Arabs and de Gaulle, many Gaullists took a cold new look at Israel. Deliveries Slowed

France hasn’t severed all its bonds with Israel but they are vestigial compared with a decade ago. And, although the Israelis still depend on

French aircraft and armour, deliveries have been slowed down.

Jerusalem, during recent days, has had to plead urgently with Paris to accelerate promised shipments. Furthermore, when viewing the frame that encompasses the Palestine war, there has been a notable advance in Russia’s position. Ever since Moscow began to supply President Nasser with arms in 1955, its presence and importance has mounted in the Middle East, especially in Syria, Egypt, Yemen and Somalia.

Moreover, the Soviet Union is now an important naval power and is considerably stronger than Britain. Rus-

sian diplomacy has obtained for its warships access to base facilities on the east Mediteranean coast in Syria and Egypt and on the Red Sea coast at Hodeida in Yemen. Russia is thus in a better position to exercise direct influence and need no longer confine itself to off-stage threats, aimed at the West and not at the Middle East itself.

Simultaneously, France is in a position to exercise an independent initiative, respected by the Arabs and perhaps suspected by the Israelis. U.S. Stand

It is against this background that we must view diplomatic efforts to calm a situation that threatens to be the most dangerous since the 1962 Cuba confrontation.

Britain, although weak, impoverished and heavily committed in Aden, is standing staunchly by the United States.

The United States, whose Sixth Fleet blandly ignored Soviet warnings to quit the Mediterranean, has made clear that it will keep open international waterways and save Israel from the menace of extinction.

But France’s support for such a thesis is at best halfhearted and Russia’s opposition is blatant All this must have encouraged President Nasser to take his latest dangerous gamble. He can assume that Moscow will back him if things get out of hand and Paris will try to bail him out if they don’t

Private Visit.—The Queen today starts a four-day private visit to Normandy dur ing which she will see several famous French racing studs.