Shimon Peres and the French-Israeli Alliance, 1954–9

Abstract

The years 1954 to 1959 mark the pinnacle in Israeli-French strategic relations. During this period, France did what no other major power was willing to do: it sold massive quantities of high-quality arms to the fledgling Jewish state, thereby dramatically shifting the Middle Eastern balance of power in Israel's favor. This article attempts to demonstrate that the ‘French connection’ was far from an inevitable consequence of mutual interests; rather, it was largely the brainchild of Shimon Peres, the then director-general of Israel's Ministry of Defense. It is shown that the situational factors that were conducive to the ‘French connection’ — for example, the mutual desire to defeat Egypt's President Gamal Abdul Nasser — were hardly apparent at that time to many key decision-makers in both France and Israel. Peres was able to succeed where the Foreign Ministry had failed by identifying situational nuances and bureaucratic opportunities that led to Israel's arms deals with France. By engaging in an active, personal diplomacy of a most unorthodox sort, Peres overcame both structural barriers and competing political interests, paving the road to the Israeli-French alliance.