page_title: France–Israel relations
section_title: 1940s–1960s
hierarchical_section_title: France–Israel relations / History / 1940s–1960s
caption_attribution_description: English: David Ben Gurion, Prime Minister of Israel, received by the foreign minister of France, Maurice Couve de Murville, at Quai d'Orsay.
context_page_description: After the Israeli Declaration of Independence in 1948 and in the early 1950s, France and Israel maintained close political and military ties. France was Israel's main weapons supplier until its withdrawal from Algeria in 1962. Three days before the outbreak of the Six-Day War in 1967, Charles de Gaulle's government imposed an arms embargo on the region, mostly affecting Israel.
  Under François Mitterrand in the early 1980s, French–Israeli relations improved greatly. Mitterrand was the first French president to visit Israel while in office. After Jacques Chirac was elected president in 1995, relations declined due to his support of Yasser Arafat during the first stages of the Second Intifada. After the election of Nicolas Sarkozy in May 2007, France's new leader said that he would refuse to greet any world leader who does not recognize Israel's right to exist.
  France has an embassy in Tel Aviv and a consulate-general in Jerusalem. Israel has an embassy in Paris and a consulate-general in Marseille.
context_section_description: After France's liberation by Allied forces, David Ben-Gurion was confident that Charles de Gaulle would assist him in the founding of a Jewish state. On 12 January 1949 France recognized the existence of Israel and supported the decision for Israel to join the United Nations. In 1953 France started selling French weapons to Israel and became one of its closest allies and supporters. France then shared with Israel a strategic interest against radical Arab nationalism, as it had to cope with nationalist sentiment in its Algerian territories. During the late 1950s France supplied Israel with the Mirage - Israel's most advanced aircraft to date and their first cutting edge combat aircraft.
  In October 1957 an agreement was signed between France and Israel about the construction of the nuclear power plant in Israel, which was completed in 1963. Future Israeli President Shimon Peres was the politician who brokered the deal. In Michael Karpin's 2001 documentary A Bomb in the Basement, Abel Thomas, chief of political staff for France's defense minister at the time said Francis Perrin, head of the French Atomic Energy Commission, advised then-Prime Minister Guy Mollet that Israel should be provided with a nuclear bomb. According to the documentary, France provided Israel with a nuclear reactor and staff to set it up in Israel together with enriched uranium and the means to produce plutonium in exchange for support in the Suez War.
  The Suez Crisis of 1956 marked a watershed for Israeli-French relations. Israel, France and the United Kingdom had conspired for control of the Suez Canal. Israel initiated a surprise invasion of Egypt, followed by the United Kingdom and France. The aims were to regain Western control of the Suez Canal and to remove Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser from power, as well as reopening the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping and stop Egyptian-sponsored fedayeen raids into Israel. After the fighting had started, the United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Nations forced Britain and France to withdraw. Israel stubbornly held out a few more months until the establishment of UNEF, which ensured freedom of navigation for Israel of the Straits of Tiran. 
  In the 1960s, with the expulsion of France from North Africa completed in 1962, the shared strategic interest against Arab nationalism dissipated, leading France to take a more conciliatory attitude toward the Arab nations and a correspondingly harsher tone toward Israel. However, work on the nuclear reactor continues with French help. France imposed an arms embargo on Israel before the beginning of the Six-Day War. After the embargo Israel had to go to a blitz because its air force could not maintain the planes for more than a couple of months without French spare parts. According to the New York Times, "this double game, however, ended when the Six-Day War in 1967 forced France to pick a side. In a shock to its Israeli allies, it chose the Arab states: despite aggressive moves by Egypt, France imposed a temporary arms embargo on the region — which mostly hurt Israel — and warned senior Israeli officials to avoid hostilities."
  The change of sides impaired as well the French-American relationship, as France was seen as an increasingly outdated and aggressive neocolonial power. The USA started to assume its current role as ally of Israel with the Six-Day War in 1967, while France decided to take sides with the Arab world to improve its relations after the independence of Algeria.
  In 1960 Ben-Gurion arrived in France for Israel's first official visit. Until the Six Day War, France was the main supplier of Israel's weapons. After the Six-Day War in June 1967,  Charles de Gaulle's government imposed an arms embargo on the region, mostly affecting Israel. In 1969, de Gaulle retired and Israel hoped that new president Georges Pompidou would bring about better relations, but Pompidou continued the weapons embargo.
caption: French foreign minister Maurice Couve de Murville with Ben-Gurion
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