I would agree that Suez was a complete fiasco, but my impression from my reading is that the French were the party that made the original proposals that were eventually agreed at Sevres. The French sounded out the British, who agreed, and then Peres was invited to the French Foreign Ministry and asked how he'd feel about Israel invading the Sinai.
Israel was not the driving force behind the operation, and in some ways I'd say Israel was the only country that benefitted from it (the UN peacekeeping force in the Sinai kept the two sides apart until 1967).
I disagree that France's support for Israel's nuclear weapons programme was completely misguided. Certainly it's fair to say that France was being free and easy regarding nuclear proliferation in a way that's unthinkable today. But the provision of nuclear technology to Israel (which was partially self-interested on France's part, Israeli scientists played a significant role in making
Gerboise Bleu happen) is something that provides the ultimate guarantee for Israel's existence. Come what may, they will not allow another Holocaust to happen.
In fairness, even though Israel's time as an almost one-party state under Mapai/Labour came to an end in the late 1970s with Begin and then Shamir, it wasn't the end of Labour governments. There were Labour governments and Labour involvement in coalitions in the 1980s and the Rabin government in the 1990s. Though I would equally agree that Ehud Barak could not seriously be considered to be Labour in the old left Zionist sense. The Israeli Labour Party of today is starting to get its act together again, I think you might be pleasantly surprised if they get into government. The rise of Yesh Atid and Kulanu means it is plausible that Labour, if they had a good election result, could get into government through some kind of Zionist Union / Kulanu / Yesh Atid / Meretz coalition that would allow (I think for the first time, though I stand to be corrected) Labour to govern without having to partner with one of the religious parties (and not to have to rely on the Arab Joint List, which would be politically problematic, and the List has become increasingly extreme anyway), which has always been a great obstruction to Labour pursuing rational policies. Isaac Herzog is no Ehud Barak
I would agree and I would disagree. I think what you say of Peres is true, and the Likudniks clearly have little interest in pursuing a peaceful settlement. But I'm also hopeful that the next election might bring about a Labour government and an attempt at a true and comprehensive settlement of the conflict.
I've gemmed your post because, even though I disagree with some of your analysis, you are clearly quite knowledgeable about Israeli politics and history and that really does stand out on this forum.
Btw, speaking of the old Zionist left, do you know much about Mapam? Sorry for this very long post here, but it's an extremely interesting story and very revealing about early Israeli history, and it's also not particularly well-known. I've pasted in some information I wrote a little while back in an email.
(Pasted text starts here)Mapam was a Marxist-Zionist party that was aroundn from the late 1940s until 1997, but the late 1940s to around 1960 was their heyday. Mapam was significantly to the left of Ben Gurion's Mapai/Labour; they were quite sympathetic to the Soviet Union. Interestingly, one of their strongest bases of support was the Army.
In 1941 the Jewish community of Palestine set up an elite special forces unit, the Palmach, to reinforce and assist the Haganah militia. Because Palmach was an illegal organisation under the laws of the British Mandate, they had to hide within the community. But the leaders of the Palmach realised that their presence might constitute a financial drain on community's in which they stayed; communities that were already of very modest means. It would not do to have Palmachim eating the food out of the mouths of Jewish workers and farmers they were supposed to protect. The Palmach had to be self-supporting, so they had a system where two weeks out of every four, each Palmachnik undertook work on the kibbutz doing agricultural and other tasks, such that he would earn enough to pay for his food and lodgings during the other two weeks of the month when the unit would be operational.
This was a very successful policy but it had an unexpected effect; Palmach, made up of the most committed and dedicated Israelis, the elite of its underground military establishment, became highly politicised. Working as agricultural labourers, they moved well to the left of the Haganah. Their officers and NCOs refused to wear badges of rank (for reasons of equality); they were very sympathetic to the Soviet Union. Each unit had a political commissar, and they sung Soviet marching songs, called each other comrade and revelled in the exploits of Soviet soldiers fighting the Nazis (for this was during World War 2). Although formally the Palmach was subordinated to the Haganah, very quickly the two organisations became estranged and the Palmach, regarding itself as an elite, almost Lacadaemonian, force became operationally and politically independent, and answered only to itself. They openly questioned the leadership of Ben Gurion. In 1948 (just as Palmach and Haganah were integrated into the new Israeli Army), the Palmachim along with two other kibbutz-based Marxist parties formed Mapam to compete against Ben Gurion's Labour/Mapai. At the 1948 election they became the second largest party and leaders of the opposition. Of the 9,000 members of the Palmach, around 90% to 95% were members of Mapam, and of its 64 senior commanders, 60 were Mapai members.
As Palmach was absorbed into the new security forces, Mapam members came to hold top positions in the Army and Shin Bet, and constituted a very significant portion of the rank-and-file of those two organisations. In 1949 Isser Harel, head of Shin Bet, became concerned about the Israeli Communist Party and put them under surveillance. He believed the Communists were infiltrating, with entryist tactics, Mapam thus giving them access to and influence over important military and intelligence officers. In 1950 Harel decided to put Mapam itself under surveillance; the problem he faced was that probably a majority of Shin Bet officers were Mapam members, including his deputy Gideon Lavi. Lavi and Harel had worked closely together on security issues in the 1940s in battles with right-wing Irgun terrorists. Harel set up a parallel organisation outside of Shin Bet, called the Special Department, to carry out the surveillance programme against Mapam. However, the ubiquity and influence of Mapam members in the security forces meant they found out within a couple of months.
Lavi recruited other members of Shin Bet to infiltrate and counter the Special Department, keeping
them under surveillance for six months. Lavi's men conducted operations for Mapam, engaging in numerous operations against the Special Department, but also spying on members of the Western diplomatic community and stealing files from Shin Bet. This eventually became known to Harel and Lavi had to resign from Shin Bet, and large numbers of Mapam-associated Shin Bet employees were sacked. Mapam ordered Lavi to set up a secret organisation within Mapam called the Department of Self Defence; it was staffed by numerous, experienced former members of Shin Bet and its function was to defend Mapam against Shin Bet and hostile state activities. Harel continued to harass Mapam, recruiting informers within their organisation, tapping their phone lines, burgling their offices. This continued for about 2 years until in 1952 Harel decided to bug the office of Mapam's general secretary. They used a very sophisticated (for the time)
CIA developed bug that required no internal power source (it's quite interesting in its own right, worth checking out; it's like RFID or wireless debit card technology in the 1950s).
Anyway, Ben Gurion received the transcripts from meetings held by top Mapam officials in that room, and he was a bit too liberal in leaking the transcripts to the press. Mapam officials saw word-for-word transcripts of what they'd said in meetings, printed in newspapers. Lavi realised that this could only come from a bug. He searched the offices, found the device and broke it in such a way that Shin Bet would believe it had malfunctioned and send a crew to repair it. The next night, a team of Shin Bet operatives broke in and Lavi's men were waiting for them. They were interrogated and handed over to the police, Mapam held a press conference exposing what had happened. The Shin Bet burglers were arrested and had a hearing before a judge, but Mapam refused to hand the bug over to the police (realising as soon as they did it would disappear); the courts said without that evidence they couldn't proceed with charges and so they were dropped. Most Israelis didn't really know what to make of it, and eventually the scandal faded from the headlines.
Interestingly, the day before the bug was found, the extreme left faction of Mapam, led by Avraham Berman (the brother of Stalin's henchmen in Poland, the Polish interior minister Jabuk Berman), split from Mapam and joined the Israeli Communist Party. They had failed to turn Mapam into a community front group. By the late 1950s and early 1960s other political currents in Israeli life had made Mapam less relevant; they consistently won around 9 seats in each election until the 1980s (3 in their final election in 1997 before being subsumed into Meretz). But in 1965 they went into coalition with Labour, and by the late 1970s they were completely estranged from Soviet communism due to their continued commitment to
Zionist Marxism.
I think it's a great story, partly because it's not well-known (even a google search doesn't turn up anything about the bugging), but particularly for what it says about early Israel, what it tells us about the political inclinations of those early left Zionists and the kibbutzim. I think there's an almost Spartan sensibility among the kibbutzim; a warrior race who live in close association with one another, a community where every man is a soldier and a farmer with the land held in common. One could even make an argument that the Palestinians are their helots (though as an admirer and supporter of Israel, I think such analogies only go so far).(Pasted text ends here).
I hope it's something you found interesting, even though Israel has changed so much, there's a part of me that hopes one day they can return to those Spartan kibbutzim values, the old socialist Zionist dispensation.