European socialists and Israel: a friendly relationship

Most socialist and social democrat parties in Western Europe welcomed the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, as a symbol of a socialist achievement. The enthusiastic partnership with a new socialist state lasted for more than two decades. During the Suez crisis in 1956, European socialists were in tune with Israel. The French case clearly illustrates a deep commitment to the defence of Israel. French Premier Guy Mollet took sides with the Conservative government in the United Kingdom to support Israel against Egypt. Nasser was portrayed as a ‘new Hitler’ in the French press. The attitude of the SFIO – the French Socialist Party – was just the same eleven years later when a new major outburst of violence occurred in the Middle East.¹

The Six-Day War of June 1967 is usually interpreted as a turning point in the relations between the French left and Israel. However, the war was just the beginning of a slow, long-term process that lasted throughout the 1970s until the beginning of the 1980s. Indeed, Mollet, who was now leading his party from the opposition benches,² strongly affirmed complete solidarity between the SFIO and MAPAÏ a few days before the outbreak of the Six-Day War. Golda Meir, a prominent figure of the Israeli left, was invited to the 56th Congress of the SFIO which took place at the end of June 1967 in Suresnes, a city whose mayor was Robert Pontillon, a well-known figure of French socialism who was for many years in charge of international affairs within the French Socialist Party. Golda Meir delivered a speech in which she strongly accused the Arab states, and Egyptian president Nasser in particular, of aggression and asked her French counterparts to support the right for the state of Israel to live in peace:

One doesn’t have to be a military expert to recognise the real danger that Israel was facing. It’s a small country with very few airfields. If we had as many airfields as Egypt, there would be no room on Israeli territory for anything other than these airfields. We know full well that the problem was very simple: whoever destroys their opponent’s air force first will have won the war. (Applause) We did what was necessary, we destroyed the enemy’s air force and this is how we won the war, but we don’t want to be, we refuse to be, dead heroes. (Applause) (Bravos in the audience) And we ask our friends, especially our Socialist friends, our friends who are members of the workers’ movement, to recognise our right to live. We cannot accept that the right of self-defence should be reserved to all peoples except one, which is to say ours, just to please our friends. (Applause) […] If Nasser had won, no Israeli would have been able to take time out of your day to speak at this Congress. (Applause) Because what Nasser has decreed is holy war, and in holy war you take no prisoners, in holy war you have to kill all your opponents, and according to Nasser every Israeli is an enemy. We are accused on all sides of being guilty of a lot of imaginary things, that don’t exist. I only admit guilt in one sense: that of having won this war. (Applause)³

At the end of her long speech, Golda Meir was warmly applauded by the French socialists, and celebrated with the singing of the ‘International’.

This situation was quite similar to that in other European countries during the 1967 war. In the United Kingdom, the Labour government led by Harold Wilson clearly supported Israel even though some of its leaders may have had more pro-Arab ties. As June Edmunds puts it:

despite its public statements of neutrality, virtually the whole Cabinet sided with Israel, with the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, and other senior members initially wanting Britain and America to intervene on Israel’s behalf; a position that stemmed from the government’s commitment to Atlanticism. Even the Foreign Secretary George Brown, who had a reputation for being pro-Arab, adopted a pro-Israeli stance behind the scenes. Brown’s concern to prevent the Soviet Union from gaining a power base in the Middle East overrode his pro-Arab sympathies.⁴

The spectre of a new genocide against Jews was also a reason for the support of French socialists and social democrats for Israel. Many of them had been Resistance fighters during the Second World War and some were of Jewish origin. Christian Pineau, a prominent member of the SFIO, was an important Resistance fighter and became Minister of Foreign Affairs in France in 1956. Daniel Mayer, a member of France’s second most important left-wing party in France, the Parti socialiste unifié (PSU), was also a former Resistance fighter, fearing massacres against Jews during the Six-Day War. In the 1950s and 1960s, many activists on the French left, including Mayer, broke with the SFIO over the Algerian War. The French socialists had pursued a colonial policy in Algeria and fought the Algerian national liberation movement. The PSU was created to the left of the SFIO by bringing together activists in favour of Algerian independence and decolonisation movements in general.⁵ But Mayer could no longer remain a member of the PSU after 1967, precisely because he disagreed with the pro-Arab stance of this party and returned to the SFIO in 1970.

More broadly, the memory of the Shoah remained very present in the European left in the 1960s. Many activists in France and in the rest of Europe had experienced the concentration camps. This memory was a driving force in the fight against anti-Semitism and in the European socialists’ friendship with the state of Israel. In Italy, Pietro Nenni, the leader of the Italian Socialist Party whose daughter had died at Auschwitz, claimed that ‘the Israeli population is composed by the survivors of Hitler’s “final solution” and has given birth to “a political and social experience that blends the ideals of democracy and socialism”’.⁶ Such a consideration underlines the fact that the state of Israel was seen as the archetype of a truly, deeply socialist state.

Even in opposition to their respective governments, European socialists adopted a pro-Israel stance, and it seemed inconceivable to criticise the Israeli government. As a serious contender against Charles de Gaulle for the French presidency, François Mitterrand was closely linked to support for Israel. A small club – the Convention des Institutions Républicaines (CIR) – was created around Mitterrand to help him rally pro-Israeli voices to the French Socialist camp in the 1960s. The CIR was very diverse, bringing together activists from many different backgrounds. Claude Estier, a journalist and member of this club, had a keen interest in the Middle East, particularly after a trip to Egypt in 1964–65. Estier, who also edited one of the publications that relayed François Mitterrand’s positions, remained a singular figure in this organisation,⁷. On Israel, he was clearly concerned by the fate of the Palestinian people and a strong supporter of the resolution of the conflict between Israel and the Arab states through a general disarmament of the regional powers. Writing a report on the situation for Mitterrand, he pleaded for a demilitarisation of Israel.⁸ Mitterrand, however, opposed Estier’s idea and rejected any such discussion, saying emphatically: ‘if it is just to claim the right for Israel to defend itself, then the means to allow its protection must be guaranteed’.⁹

In West Germany, Foreign Minister and Social-Democrat leader Willy Brandt tried to deal with Israel in an even-handed way. Relations between the Arab states and West Germany were suspended in 1965 and ‘formal ties’ were then established with Israel.¹⁰ However, when he became German Chancellor and leader of the coalition between the Social Democrats (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, SPD) and the centrist Free Democratic Party (Freie Demokratische Partei, FDP) in 1969, Brandt turned out to be far more open to the Arab states. Willy Brandt’s policy was characterised by the re-establishment of diplomatic relations with the Arab countries and a desire to keep an equal distance between the Arabs and the Israelis, which was coined as ‘a policy of even-handedness (Ausgewogenheit)’.¹¹

The 1970s: a turning point for French socialists

Support for the Palestinians was not self-evident in the socialist milieus of the late 1960s. When support occurred, it caused divisions between and within many different political organisations. In France, the CIR gradually asserted itself as a laboratory of ideas conducive to the development of a more pro-Arab, or pro-Palestinian, approach to the conflict, that gained ground in the following years while the Socialist Party was going through a major period of restructuring – a transition period that began with the election of Alain Savary at the head of a new party in 1969 until it ended in 1971, when the Socialist Party was officially launched after the Épinay Congress, which also saw the victory of François Mitterrand to the leadership. Interest in Palestine and the Palestinians grew within the CIR, as evidenced by several articles which appeared in the journal Dire, which was founded and edited by Estier to air the ideas of the political club among a wider public. As an experienced journalist, who worked for France Observateur and Le Monde, Estier delivered his analyses and published the articles of several Israeli militants for the Palestinian cause. They included Uri Avnery, an Israeli journalist and left-wing activist who campaigned for peace between Israelis and Palestinians, who participated in the creation of the party Haolam Hazeh – Koach Hadash (This World – New Force) in 1965 and became one of its representatives in the Knesset, and who would later meet Yasser Arafat in 1982. Dire also published articles by Simha Flapan, an active member of the Israeli far-left party Mapam (Mifleget HaPoalim HaMeuhedet, the party of united workers, formed in 1948) and a contributor to New Outlook, a magazine dedicated to dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians, and who became increasingly critical of Zionism in the 1970s. In 1970, Estier published a thorough investigation of the situation in the Middle East, where he had an impressive network of contacts. In the 1960s, he managed to meet both the Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser and one of the spokesmen of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). A form of embryonic partisan diplomacy was already emerging within the CIR in the 1970s, which prefigured in part what was to become the diplomacy emanating from the Socialist Party from 1971 to 1981.

Claude Estier maintained close links with François Mitterrand and had privileged access to the socialist leader, even though Mitterrand did not always follow Estier in his pro-Arab analyses. Mitterrand personally tried to preserve a certain balance between support for the state of Israel and respect for the rights of the Arab peoples. In the ‘Socialist Contract’ of the CIR established in 1969, it was clearly stated that ‘the socialists recognise the Palestinian national fact in the same way as they have always recognised the Israeli state’, and at the beginning of 1970 in the French newspaper Le Monde, Mitterrand also indicated that ‘just as one cannot deny the existence of the state of Israel, one cannot deny the Palestinian people’.¹² This middle-of-the-road position suited the tactical game he was conducting to win over opposite factions within the PS. This was reflected during the Epinay Congress in June 1971 when Mitterrand succeeded in rallying the supporters of a more left-wing line and those inclined to third worldism, like the Centre d’études, de recherches et d’éducation socialiste (CERES) of Jean-Pierre Chevènement, with the supporters of a traditional line, closer to Israel, represented by Pierre Mauroy. Although international issues were not the main focus of the Socialists during this congress, the new leader of the party succeeded in rallying around him supporters of the traditional party line, which was in favour of Israel, and younger activists from different backgrounds, whose sensitivity to Third World issues was much more pronounced. Throughout his time at the head of the party, François Mitterrand would never cease to seek a balance between these different tendencies within the party in order to maintain a form of unity.

From the formal creation of the Socialist Party (PS) after the Epinay Congress, relations with the Palestinians gradually become more institutionalised and the party’s orientations evolved due to various changes in the structure and composition of the party. French Socialists who supported the Palestinian cause were given positions within the party. In the international relations secretariat, for example, Lionel Jospin had become an active supporter of the Palestinians, in stark contrast to the previous party leadership. He made several trips to the Middle East to meet Arab and Palestinian leaders. If the reversal of values was not total, the Party was nonetheless subjected to a whole series of new influences over the course of the decade. The policy of the Socialist Party consisted in leaving a great freedom of expression to the different factions which composed the Party while displaying a central, single position in the public debate and in particular in the relation with the other parties of the left. For example, the Programme Commun de Gouvernement, a political alliance between the PS, the French Communist Party (PCF) and the Radicals of the Left, established in June 1972, used specific terms to evoke the conflict in the Middle East:

It [the government] will strive to contribute to the restoration of peace and security in the Middle East, while respecting the right to exist and the sovereignty of all the states of the region, including the state of Israel, as well as the national rights of the Arab people of Palestine. It will base its activity in this sense on the Security Council resolution of 22 November 1967.¹³

Ambiguity remains in this formulation because of the necessity to recognise the right of Israel to exist as a state, whereas the ‘Arab people of Palestine’ (and not the ‘Palestinians’ or the ‘people of Palestine’) only have ‘national rights’, leaving the question of statehood unanswered. Palestinians could thus form a nation without a state if this logic were followed.

Several factors explain the changing attitude of socialist activists during the 1970s. While the PS had to reconcile different tendencies and promote a fairly balanced line on the Palestinian question, its First Secretary accorded a significant place to more committed voices in favour of the Palestinians and discovered for himself the reality of the conditions in which the Palestinians lived. François Mitterrand’s position evolved, primarily because of the contacts that he made throughout the decade, which allowed him to see the situation for himself on the ground, and to meet Palestinians.

These contacts began in 1972 with a visit to Gaza where he met Rachad Chawa, the city’s mayor. Mitterrand saw the living conditions of the Palestinian refugees for himself, which had a profound impact on him. He also appreciated the contacts he made in Gaza, in particular Chawa, who was a moderate figure far removed from the nationalist positions of the PLO.¹⁴ This decision to meet with the Palestinians is important to understand the attitude of Mitterrand towards the PLO and Yasser Arafat in the years that followed. Two other trips were a milestone for Mitterrand. First was a trip to Cairo in 1974 where he met Yasser Arafat for the first time. He also met President Muhammad Anwar es-Sadat and several Egyptian officials, including the Minister of Foreign Affairs. His meeting with Yasser Arafat was not planned: it was an informal meeting organised by a newspaper, at the insistence of the Egyptians. The conversation was very short and nothing concrete came out of it.¹⁵ Then came a trip to Hebron in 1976 where Mitterrand met several mayors of Palestinian municipalities. During these trips, he also surrounded himself with specialists or experts of the Palestinian question and the Middle East, both those closer to the Palestinians such as Estier, as well as those closer to Israel like Pontillon.

Another element that explains why pro-Arab voices were increasingly heard within the PS lies in the direction in which the Party was taken by Mitterrand. This spoke to the balance between left-wing and more moderate currents within the party that Mitterrand was encouraging. Mitterrand’s strategy was to promote groups that were firmly on the left of the party and more moderate ones. The CERES acquired more and more influence in the debate on the Palestinian question and regularly echoed it in its publications, in particular in Frontières and Repères, on the left of the Socialist Party. They printed numerous articles in which Israel’s policies were strongly criticised, with the CERES itself advocating a negotiated solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the recognition of a future Palestinian state.

In preparation for the PS Congress in Grenoble in June 1973, and as stated in its journal Frontière, which also drew up a table of the differences between the motions within the Party, Jean-Pierre Chevènement’s CERES presented a motion clearly stating its desire to see the creation of a Palestinian state within secure and recognised borders.¹⁶ The CERES stated that it was ‘committed to the implementation of the Security Council resolution of November 1967, which included, on the part of the state of Israel the renunciation of any annexation, and the recognition of Israel’s right to exist as well as a Palestinian state with internationally secure and recognised borders’.¹⁷ But the CERES was still one of the few groups in the party to raise the idea of a Palestinian state. The rest of the Socialist Party-sponsored motions did not even mention the fate of the Palestinians and remained very vague on the international questions. The CERES seems to have been part of a competition within the socialist ranks on how to support the Palestinian cause and it claimed to be resolutely in favour of all peoples struggling for their national liberation. The fact that any mention of the Middle East was absent from the motion presented by its opponents reinforces the idea that Chevènement’s CERES was at the forefront of thinking about the plight of the Palestinians. A few months later, when the Yom Kippur War broke out, tensions arose between the Paris Federation of the PS, where the ideas of the CERES were in vogue, and the Party’s Executive Bureau. The Paris Federation then published a text in which it ‘no longer mention[ed] the need to provide the state of Israel with borders, call[ed] for the restitution of all land to establish a Palestinian state and ma[de] Israel responsible for the affront’.¹⁸ The Executive Bureau considered this position not to be in accordance with the position of the party. Despite these criticisms, the CERES continued throughout the 1970s to include in its proposals for international relations the creation of a Palestinian state. This was the first example of a solidly pro-Palestinian current within the PS, whereas previously this commitment appeared more individual and was only subscribed to by a few individuals.

This transformation within the PS was also beneficial for Estier, a pioneer of the Palestinian cause among socialists. When he became director of L’Unité, the weekly magazine of the PS, in 1972, he carried out a considerable amount of work: the aim was not only to give his point of view but to provide a regular account of the evolving situation in the Middle East and to give a forum to the various protagonists in the conflict, both Israeli and Palestinian. For example, in December 1977, the Socialist newspaper interviewed the PLO representative in Paris, Ezzedine Kalak, who reaffirmed the necessity of a recognition of a Palestinian state:

The international community now recognises the Palestinian problem as the very basis of the Arab-Israeli conflict. So repeating this obvious truth is nothing new. Today, the struggle of the Palestinian people is going through a decisive stage: that of Palestinian representation. Who represents the national rights of the Palestinians today? The Palestinian people have given their answer: the PLO. As we have seen in previous colonial wars, whether in Algeria or Vietnam, the colonisers have always tried to find weak interlocutors to seek some sort of solution. But these interlocutors never solved any problems. The same thing is happening today: the Israeli leaders think they can solve the Palestinian problem with certain Palestinian individuals in the West Bank or in the Gaza Strip, in collaboration with King Hussein’s regime. We regret that President Sadat has gone down this road. I repeat that we want a genuine, real and lasting peace, and this cannot be achieved with individuals who represent only themselves.¹⁹

An equally important theme of this decade and one which also explains why the PS changed its attitude, was the arrival of new militants within the Party. This was especially true after the Assises du socialisme, a debate organised in October 1974 within the party, enabled a number of Christian activists to join the Socialist Party, such as Michel Rocard, a former member of the PSU who became an important figure in the Socialist Party between 1970 and 1980 (before he became Prime Minister from 1988 to 1991, under President Mitterrand).²⁰ When Rocard and part of the PSU joined the PS, the support for Third World struggles and the Palestinian cause held a central place in their thinking. Rocard maintained close links with the Palestinian representatives in Paris. The ideas of the newcomers, armed with this international background, made their way into the PS, although the PSU had not been deserted by all its pro-Palestinian militants. The group around Rocard expressed itself in the journal Faire, established in 1975, which was committed to the defence of the Palestinian cause and relied on several experts such as Xavier Baron, a journalist with the Agence France Presse (AFP) in the Middle East. However, the magazine’s interest in international relations and the Middle East appeared less present than in other socialist factions, such as the CERES.

What the moment of the Assises du socialisme reveals more generally is a whole network of activists that had been rehabilitated by Christianity and that had come to believe in the PS.²¹ Although a fraction of the Christian Left, represented by Robert Buron, had already rallied the PS at the Congress of Epinay in 1971, in particular through the K motion calling for mass revolutionary action and union with the Communists,²² the Assises du socialisme of October 1974 saw the arrival of a whole series of Christian groups, often linked to trade unionism, through the Confédération Française Démocratique du Travail (CFDT), Jeunesse Ouvrière Chrétienne (JOC) and Jeunesse Étudiante Chrétienne (JEC).²³

Among these groups, one publication stands out: Témoignage Chrétien, edited by Pierre-Luc Séguillon. The flagship newspaper of the Christian Left was a bastion of the defence of the Palestinian cause in France. Séguillon, who was a journalist for Témoignage Chrétien before becoming its editor, was a member of many Christian groups and committees for Palestine and had a degree in Arabic theology from the University of Saint Joseph in Beirut. He was thus active in these Christian circles composed of those who can be called ‘left-wing Christians’.²⁴ He also met socialist activists committed to the defence of the Palestinians, such as Lionel Jospin and Didier Motchane, and worked with Chevènement at the CERES. Other members of the PS like Maurice Buttin, a lawyer for the family of Moroccan socialist Mehdi Ben Barka²⁵ in France, were committed to supporting the Palestinians. Buttin was involved in various groups such as the Groupe de Recherche et d’Action pour le règlement du Problème Palestinien (GRAPP), and the Association de Solidarité Franco-Arabe (ASFA),²⁶ both of which aimed to support the Palestinian cause. Another central figure in the PS was Alain Chenal, lecturer in public law at the University of Nanterre since 1968, who was responsible for the Mediterranean sector within the PS’s National Secretariat for the Third World and subsequently within the PS’s National Secretariat for International Relations, working closely with their director Lionel Jospin. Chenal and Jospin were very active in the years 1975–79, attempting to sway the PS to take the side of the Palestinians. They were both in contact with Yasser Arafat, with the approval of Mitterrand.²⁷

European socialism and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in the 1980s: a deeper commitment

Another element explaining such a change in the 1970s within the PS was the general revolution in European social democracy during this decade. The European socialist or social-democratic parties were turning more and more towards Palestine in these years and one can surmise that the PS and its First Secretary were not insensitive to this change of wider and greater magnitude. Indeed, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict affected many European states, especially as regards terrorism. France, and Europe more broadly, were the scene of pro-Palestinian attacks and settling of accounts between Palestinian fighters and the Israeli secret services. Moreover, several leaders of the PLO in Paris, known to several socialist activists, were assassinated there.²⁸ This prominence of the Israeli– Palestinian conflict in Europe led the socialist political forces to include the Palestinian dimension in their policy grid. This change in attitude should also be seen in the context of the profound changes in Israeli political life at the turn of the 1970s and 1980s, when the Israeli Labour Party, which had been in power since 1948, was defeated by the conservatives of Likud and Menachem Begin.

Bruno Kreisky in Austria, Olof Palme in Sweden and Willy Brandt in the Federal Republic of Germany all turned their gaze towards the Palestinians during their time in office. During the 1970s, Bruno Kreisky travelled several times to the Middle East. He had close connections with Arab leaders, and especially with Yasser Arafat. Between 1976 and 1983, Olof Palme’s close adviser Bernt Carlsson was Secretary General of the Socialist International and developed a strong relationship with Yasser Arafat’s envoy to the Socialist International, Issam Sartawi. As discussed by Lubna Qureshi in this volume, Kreisky, Brandt and Palme were important social democratic leaders in Europe in the 1970s, and formed what Oliver Rathkolb calls a ‘triumvirate’ within the Socialist International and within European institutions such as the EEC, aiming to forge relations with the countries of the South and in particular with the countries of the Middle East. Brandt was head of the Independent Commission on International Development Issues and Kreisky co-chaired the first North–South summit in Cancun in 1980. Thanks to their intensive work, the PLO became an important partner in negotiations to resolve the conflict.²⁹

In France, the situation slowly changed after Mitterrand’s election as President in May 1981. On the eve of the 1981 presidential election, Mitterrand answered questions from Daniel Mayer, the former socialist leader, activist in favour of Israel, and president of the International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH) in the 1970s and the 1980s. Mayer pressed Mitterrand about the policy that he would implement in the Middle East if he became President of the French Republic. To the following question, ‘Do you want France to invite Arafat to Paris, given that the terrorists who are in Europe are in collusion with him?’, Mitterrand’s response was clear: ‘I for my part have never said or written that I would take such an initiative’.³⁰ Nevertheless, the question of the PLO as a diplomatic actor was more difficult to answer for the French Socialist leader. According to Mitterrand:

the PLO today is probably the most representative organization of the Palestinian aspirations. It is a part of the problem that every responsible politician must take into consideration, without implying an adherence to the objectives and methods it uses. I am a foe of indiscriminate and terrorist violence. It devalues in a perhaps irreversible way the scope of the political discourse that it is supposed to convey. As I have already said, the PLO will deny itself the ability that it claims as long as it does not acknowledge the existence of the state of Israel. Some states like Lebanon are trying to use for their own benefit the human and military capital built up by the various branches of the PLO. I will simply say that the PLO has everything to lose in these gambles with powers that are more concerned with their own interests, and on the contrary, it would have everything to gain in a recognition of the state of Israel on the basis I have indicated above.³¹

These two questions were crucial for the socialist leader since they were the ones he would have to answer during a large part of his presidency. It was not until eight years later, in May 1989, that Arafat set foot on French soil for the first time, for an official visit. During his speech at the Institut du monde arabe, he stated that the PLO Charter was ‘null and void’ with regard to the non-recognition of Israel, which in effect paved the way for formal recognition of the State of Israel by the PLO.

The 1980s were marked by increasingly violent conflicts in the Middle East, making it difficult for the French Socialist president to act. During his visit to Israel in March 1982, he decided to set the tone of his policy in a speech delivered in front of the Knesset, in which he explained to Israeli MPs why he thought that it was a necessity to recognise the rights of the Palestinians:

Why did I want the Arab inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza to have a homeland? Because no one can be asked to give up their identity.… It is up to the Palestinians, I repeat, as it is up to the others, whatever their origin, to decide their own fate. On the condition that they situate their right within the respect of the right of others, in the respect of international law and in dialogue instead of violence.… Dialogue presupposes the prior and mutual recognition of the right of others to exist, the prior and mutual renunciation of war, whether direct or indirect.… Dialogue presupposes that each party can go to the end of its right, which, for the Palestinians as for others, may in due course mean a state. France will approve any dialogue or approach to dialogue as well as observe with concern any unilateral action which on one side or the other would delay the time for peace.³²

Mitterrand reiterated his desire that the Palestinians should renounce their ambitions to destroy the state of Israel but took a further step in their direction by clearly using the term ‘State’ in conjunction with ‘Palestinian’, which marked another turning point in his Middle Eastern policy. From then on, he no longer spoke of a Palestinian ‘national fact’ or ‘national rights’ for the Palestinians but of a state, which implied the redrawing of borders and major geopolitical upheavals. However, his speech did not calm tensions in the Middle East, at a time when the Israelis embarked on a military operation called ‘Peace in Galilee’ in the summer of 1982 in Lebanon. In September 1982, Christian militias massacred Palestinians in Sabra and Shatila.³³ Following these events, the situation in the Middle East was taken very seriously by the Socialist International. The Socialist International became increasingly concerned about the plight of the Palestinians and the Social Democratic leaders appeared to be more active and committed on this issue than the French Socialists at first. At the request of its President Willy Brandt, and Mario Soares, the President of its group on the Middle East, the Socialist International sent a six-person delegation to Beirut. Socialist International Secretary General Carlsson, who was very close to the Palestinians, was a member of the delegation, as was French Socialist Jacques Huntzinger. Upon his return to France the latter recorded his assessment of the chaotic situation in which Lebanon found itself for the French Socialist magazine L’Unité:

We arrive at one of the PLO’s ‘headquarters’, Fahkrani. Behind the sandbags protecting the entrance of a collapsed building, two kerosene lamps illuminate a display of rockets and bombs. A corridor leads to a small room without doors or windows. Yasser Arafat joins us there and welcomes us. The setting is somewhat sordid, but the leader of the PLO has been ‘at home’ in this building for years and he is still there for a few days. We have the strange impression of meeting a man who wants above all to remain faithful to a certain image, that of the United Nations, the vice-chairman of the Non-Aligned Movement, the man who talks with heads of state. He wants to make us forget the derisory framework in which we find ourselves.… He ends his interview by thanking the Europeans for their solidarity with the population of Beirut and the Palestinian people and insists on the fact that there would have been no agreement on the withdrawal of the Palestinians without the arrival of the French troops.³⁴

Here was an interesting example of a member of the French Socialist Party who was given a mission by the Socialist International and who would use this international competence in his later functions.³⁵ One can see the tension between French intervention and Socialist diplomacy, but we can also understand that this meeting with Arafat was also a way to get him to admit that it was the French troops that had allowed the Palestinian withdrawal from Beirut. The meetings held by Jacques Huntzinger on behalf of the Socialist International and the Socialist Party were in line with French diplomacy, which was keen to preserve its links with the Palestinians. In parallel with these missions, Socialist leaders, including Prime Minister Pierre Mauroy and the Socialist Party’s First Secretary Lionel Jospin, conducted intensive negotiations with the Palestinians.

Finally, some European and French socialists were given new prominence in the 1980s in their governments’ relations with the Palestinians. In France, this was the case of pro-Palestinian figures such as Claude Cheysson, the Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1981–84, and Roland Dumas, who succeeded him from 1984 to 1986 and from 1988 to 1993. Cheysson, who had been an observer in Palestine in 1948, kept a certain freedom of speech throughout his presence at the Quai d’Orsay, causing some interference with statements by Mitterrand. Dumas, a lawyer committed to the fight against colonialism, was also very close to the Arab world.

The turning point of the 1970s was confirmed in the following decade, with the Palestinian question being increasingly taken into consideration. European socialist leaders accepted the right of the Palestinians to participate in the congress of the Socialist International in Albufeira, Portugal, in April 1983. It was during this congress that Arafat’s special envoy, Issam Sartawi, was assassinated by a commando linked to the terrorist Sabri al-Banna, alias Abu Nidal, whose group had seceded from the PLO in 1974. This terrorist attack was aimed at preventing the efforts of Carlsson and the European socialist leaders from finding a peaceful solution to the Middle East conflict. The visit of Arafat’s envoy Issam Sartawi to Portugal was also not without difficulties, as the Israeli socialist leader Shimon Peres was strongly opposed to it. The Socialist International was thus caught up in the turmoil of events in the Middle East. Carlsson was forced to resign from his position in the Socialist International and died in 1988 in the Lockerbie bombing.

Some conclusions

European socialists underwent a profound change in their attitude to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in the 1970s and 1980s. While the attraction for Israel was predominant in the 1960s and early 1970s, consideration for the Palestinians became increasingly strong, specifically in the 1970s and 1980s due to the increasingly worrying situation of Palestinian refugees and the development of the PLO. Support for Israel also declined as a result of its policy towards the Palestinians and the fact that the Israeli Labour Party was defeated by the Israeli Right in the late 1970s. The State of Israel no longer appeared to be an ideal socialist state and its relations with European socialists gradually deteriorated.

Notes

1. 1.  François Lafon, Guy Mollet: itinéraire d’un socialiste controversé (1905–1975) (Paris: Fayard, 2006); Denis Lefebvre, Les secrets de l’expédition de Suez: 1956 (Paris: CNRS éditions, 2019); Alain Herberth, Les socialistes, les juifs & Israël: de la question juive à la question d’Israël (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2021).

2. 2.  Guy Mollet remained the leader of the SFIO until the creation of the new Socialist Party in 1969.

3. 3.  Fondation Jean Jaurès, Centre des Archives Socialistes, Compte-rendu sténographique du 56^ème Congrès national de Suresnes, 29 June to 2 July 1967.

4. 4.  June Edmunds, ‘The Evolution of British Labour Party Policy on Israel from 1967 to the Intifada’, Twentieth Century British History 11, no. 1 (2000), 25.

5. 5.  Bernard Ravenel, Quand la gauche se réinventait: le PSU, histoire d’un parti visionnaire, 1960–1989 (Paris: La Découverte, 2016); Jacques Sauvageot, Le PSU, des idées pour un socialisme au XXIè siècle (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2012); Marc Heurgon, Histoire du PSU: La fondation et la guerre d’Algérie (1958–1962) (Paris: La Découverte, 1994).

6. 6.  Claudio Brillanti, ‘The Italian Communists and Socialists’ Reading of the Six-Day War and its Consequences’, in The European Left and the Jewish Question, 1848–1992, Between Zionism and Antisemitism, ed. Alessandra Tarquini (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), 246.

7. 7.  Laurent Jalabert, ‘La Convention des institutions républicaines (1964–1971)’, Vingtième Siècle. Revue d’histoire 104, no. 4 (2009), 139.

8. 8.  ‘Origines et conséquences de la crise au Moyen-Orient’, 4–5 November 1967, 11, Fondation Jean Jaurès, Centre des Archives Socialistes, Papers of Claude Estier, F FP 5/30.

9. 9.  Jean-Pierre Filiu, Mitterrand et la Palestine (Paris: Fayard, 2005), 32–3.

10. 10.  Carole Fink, ‘ “The Most Difficult Journey of All”: Willy Brandt’s Trip to Israel in June 1973’, The International History Review 37, no. 3 (2015), 504.

11. 11.  Fink, ‘The Most Difficult Journey of All’, 504.

12. 12.  Filiu, Mitterrand et la Palestine, 34.

13. 13.  Parti socialiste, Parti communiste français, Mouvement des Radicaux de gauche, Programme commun de gouvernement (Paris: Flammarion, 1973).

14. 14.  Filiu, Mitterrand et la Palestine, 38.

15. 15.  Filiu, Mitterrand et la Palestine, 44.

16. 16.  Le poing et la rose 16, juin 1973, 8, http://62.210.214.201/cg-ps/documents/pdf/cong-1973-06-22-1-jnl2.pdf.

17. 17.  ‘Avant le congrès de Grenoble, Tableau comparé des motions présentées aux militants du parti socialiste’, Frontière 7, June 1973, 4–13.

18. 18.  Laurence Coulon, L’opinion française, Israël et le conflit israélo-arabe 1947–1987 (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2009), 266.

19. 19.  ‘Ezzedine Kalak (OLP): “Que l’existence nationale du peuple palestinien soit reconnue!”’, L’Unité, 2 December 1977, 23.

20. 20.  For more on Rocard, see Pierre-Emmanuel Guigo, Michel Rocard (Paris: Perrin, 2020).

21. 21.  François Kraus, Les Assises du socialisme ou l’échec d’une tentative de rénovation d’un parti, Les Notes de la fondation Jean Jaurès, no 31, July 2002, 74.

22. 22.  Robert Buron, a Christian Democrat and former minister under the Fourth Republic, joined the PS and embodied a very minor tendency of the centre-left within the party. On Buron and these debates, see Roberto Colozza, ‘Robert Buron: parcours d’un chrétien de gauche (1962–1973), Parlement(s), Revue d’histoire politique 30, no. 3 (2019).

23. 23.  These groups were Christian-led trade unions who played a significant role in the 1968 uprising in France. They called for more liberty in the working class and for ‘autogestion’. Many of its members joined the PS in the 1970s after having been members of the PSU.

24. 24.  Denis Pelletier and Jean-Louis Schlegel, eds. À la gauche du Christ: les chrétiens de gauche en France de 1945 à nos jours (Paris: Seuil, 2012). They did not call themselves left-wing Christians but the term was coined by historians to describe them.

25. 25.  Mehdi Ben Barka was a Moroccan socialist who opposed King Hassan II and supported Third World causes. He was kidnapped in Paris 1965 and his body was never found.

26. 26.  The GRAPP (Group of Research and Action to solve the Palestinian Problem) was a group of intellectuals around orientalist Maxime Rodinson which gathered journalists and intellectuals on the left who were interested in defending the Palestinian cause. The ASFA (Association for Franco-Arab Solidarity) is a group created by former Gaullist minister Louis Terrenoire aimed at gathering journalists, lawyers and politicians from various political backgrounds around support to the Palestinians. It can be considered as a pro-Arab lobby in French politics.

27. 27.  Lionel Jospin, Lionel raconte Jospin: entretiens avec Pierre Favier et Patrick Rotman (Paris: Seuil, 2010).

28. 28.  Mahmoud Hamchari was assassinated in Paris in 1972 by Mossad in retaliation for the assassination of Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists during the Munich Olympic Games in September 1972. Ezzedine Kalak, his successor, was assassinated by the Abu Nidal Organization, a Palestinian terrorist organisation, in Paris in 1978.

29. 29.  Oliver Rathkolb, ‘Brandt, Kreisky and Palme as Policy Entrepreneurs: Social Democratic Networks in Europe’s Policy Towards the Middle East’, in Transnational Networks in Regional Integration, Governing Europe 1945–83, ed. Wolfram Kaiser, Brigitte Leucht and Michael Gehler (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) 152–75.

30. 30.  Perspectives France-Israël, n^o 95, April–May 1981, Centre d’histoire de Sciences Po (CHSP), Papers of Daniel Mayer, 2 MA 8 (Middle East).

31. 31.  Perspectives France-Israël, n^o 95, April–May 1981.

32. 32.  François Mitterrand, Speech at the Knesset, 4 March 1982, https://www.vie-publique.fr/discours/136068-discours-de-m-francois-mitterrand-president-de-la-republique-la-kne.

33. 33.  The Sabra and Chatila camps were refugee camps near Beirut in Lebanon. They were inhabited by Palestinian refugees and fighters. In September 1982, the Israeli army let the Lebanese Christian militias enter the camp in order to kill the Palestinian resistance. The militias massacred thousands of Palestinians and the horror of this event remained in the Palestinian as well as in the Western memory as a shock.

34. 34.  Jacques Huntzinger, ‘Ce que j’ai vu et entendu à Beyrouth’, L’Unité, n^o 479, 10 September 1982, 13–14. At the request of the Lebanese government, a UN force made up of French troops was sent to Lebanon to oversee the evacuation of Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian fedayeen from Beirut, where they were besieged by the Israeli army.

35. 35.  He was the French ambassador to Israel from 1999 to 2003.

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