xxx cj853a-07 July 20, 2004 18:39
Int. J. Middle East Stud. 36 (2004), 657–673. Printed in the United States of America
DOI: 10.1017.S002074380436407X
Avi Shlaim
ISR A E L B E T W E E N E A ST A N D W E ST, 1948–56
The two main issues in Israel’s foreign policy are relations with the Arab world and
relations with the Great Powers, and there is extensive literature on both. But whereas
the literature on relations with the Great Powers is marked by a broad consensus, the
literature on relations with the Arab world is dominated by a deep and often acrimonious
debate. A major landmark in the evolution of this debate was the emergence in the late
1980s of a school of “new,” or revisionist, Israeli historians. Among the members of this
group were Simha Flapan, Benny Morris, Ilan Pappe, and the present author.1 We were
called the “new historians” because we challenged the traditional Zionist narrative of
the birth of Israel and of the first Arab–Israeli war. The momentous events that unfolded
in 1948 were the main focus of the debate.2 Subsequent books by some of these authors
extended the critique of Israel’s policy in the conflict to the post-independence period.3
The debate between the “old” and the “new” historians has been going on for nearly two
decades, and it is still going strong.
By contrast, the literature on Israel’s international orientation has been much less contentious
and much less controversial. While differences on specific issues and episodes
undoubtedly exist, there is no alternative school of thought about the shift in Israel’s
posture from non-alignment in 1948 to close alignment with the West by 1956. Agreement
on the broad contours of the story of how Israel came to be aligned with the West
should not be confused, however, with lack of progress in scholarship on the subject. On
the contrary, the declassification of official documents in Israeli, Western, and Soviet
archives makes it possible for scholars to write in much greater detail and depth than in
the past about Israel’s relations with both East and West in the first decade of statehood.4
The purpose of this article is to review Israel’s policy in world politics during this critical
decade in light of some of the new evidence that is now available.
Oneof theoriginal imperatives of Zionist strategyinworldpolitics was analliancewith
a Great Power. External support was essential for the project of building an independent
Jewish state in Palestine. From the very beginning, toward the end of the 19th century, the
Zionist movement displayed two features that were to be of fundamental and enduring
importance in its subsequent history: the non-recognition of a Palestinian national entity,
and the quest for an alliance with a Great Power external to the Middle East. Theodor
Herzl, the visionary of the Jewish state, exemplified both of these features. He assumed
that the Zionist movement would achieve its goal not through an understanding with
Avi Shlaim is a Professor at St. Antony’s College, Oxford OX2 6JF, United Kingdom; e-mail: avi.
shlaim@cant.ox.ac.uk.
© 2004 Cambridge University Press 0020-7438/04 $12.00
xxx cj853a-07 July 20, 2004 18:39
658 Avi Shlaim
the local Palestinians but through an alliance with the dominant Great Power of the day.
And he was tireless in his search for an external sponsor. In the formative period of
the movement, the weakness of the Yishuv, the pre-independence Jewish community in
Palestine, and the growing hostility of the Palestinians combined to make the reliance
on a Great Power a central element in Zionist strategy. The dominant Great Power in
the Middle East changed several times in the course of the 20th century: first it was the
Ottoman Empire; after World War I it was Great Britain; and after World War II it was
the United States. But the Zionist fixation with enlisting the support of the Great Powers
in the struggle for statehood and in the consolidation of statehood remained constant.
The birth of the State of Israel in 1948 coincided with the onset of the Cold War
between East and West. In 1947, as the struggle for Palestine entered its critical phase,
the United States and the Soviet Union came out in support of the establishment of
an independent Jewish state. Both superpowers voted in favor of the United Nations
resolution for the partition of Palestine and the establishment of a Jewish state in what
was a rare occasion of agreement between them during the Cold War. This was followed
up with political support, diplomatic recognition, and, in the case of the Soviet Union,
the supply of vital military aid to the fledgling state. Israel thus came into the world
under uniquely propitious international circumstances: it enjoyed the support of both
East and West in its struggle for independence.
But the new state’s international position was paradoxical in a number of ways. In
the first place, faraway countries accorded it diplomatic recognition while its immediate
neighbors did not. Geographically, it was located in Asia, but culturally it regarded itself
as part of the West. To stay on good terms with both East and West, the newly born state
adopted a policy of i-hizdahut, or non-identification in the global struggle between the
two camps. Michael Comay, a senior official at the Foreign Ministry, summed up both
the dilemma and the solution: “[a]t the birth of the state there were two godfathers—the
United States and the Soviet Union. To try to retain the support of both, we adopted a
posture of non-identification, of keeping out of the Cold War.”5
There were other, no less compelling reasons for the posture of non-identification.
One was Israel’s sense of responsibility for the fate and welfare of Jews everywhere.
Second, there was Israel’s desperate need for aliyah, immigration, coupled with the fact
that the two rival blocs contained large numbers of Jews. Third, Israel’s involvement in
a bitter conflict with its neighbors made it vital to secure access to arms. The Eastern
bloc served as the country’s main arms supplier during the War of Independence, but
there was the hope and the expectation of acquiring arms from the Western bloc, as well.
Fourth, from the very beginning Israel was heavily dependent on external economic aid.
The United States was the most coveted source of aid, but prudence dictated keeping all
options open.
In addition to these essentially practical considerations, Israel’s internal political and
ideological makeup made it reluctant to take sides in the emergent Cold War between
East and West. Many of Israel’s founding fathers had come from Russia and Eastern
Europe. Not only the Israeli Communist Party and the Marxist–Zionist party Mapam but
a significant part of the mainstream labor party, Mapai, looked to Moscow for inspiration
and guidance in the international arena. A foreign policy of non-identification helped to
preserve the internal balance between Mapai, the ruling party, and its left-wing coalition
partners. It also dovetailed with a sincere desire shared by all the major parties to make
xxx cj853a-07 July 20, 2004 18:39
Israel Between East and West, 1948–56 659
their state a positive force for peace and to refrain from doing anything that might
exacerbate international tensions.6 Non-identification thus reflected, to some extent, the
messianism latent in the Jewish soul and the hope that a new era of peace and goodwill
was about to dawn. Yet in the final analysis, non-identification was a pragmatic policy
designed to serve the Israeli national interest rather than an ideological conception of
neutrality in world politics.
Moshe Sharett, Israel’s first foreign minister, was the principal proponent of the
principle of non-identification with either of the contending blocs in the emergent Cold
War. To his Mapai colleagues, during the struggle for statehood, Sharett repeatedly
stressed the importance of avoiding exclusive affiliation, of “knocking on every door,”
of seeking help from any quarter. In the early years of statehood, he elevated this principle
to the status of official doctrine and expounded it on numerous occasions. Indeed, Sharett
was one of the first statesmen of the newly independent states of Asia and Africa to
articulate the idea of non-alignment. Yet Israel was not regarded as a non-aligned state,
nor was it accepted into the councils of the Third World.7
David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister and a shrewd practitioner of power
politics, was in full accord with Sharett about the importance of keeping all options
open. On 27 September 1948, with the war still in progress, Ben-Gurion declared before
the Provisional State Council, “We have friends both in the East and in the West. We
could not have conducted the war without the important help we received from several
States of East and West . . . the interests of the Jewish people are not identical with those
of any State or any bloc in the world. . . . There is no identification between a small and a
big nation, except if the small nation completely subordinates itself, or if the big nation
is composed entirely of angels. We do not want to subordinate ourselves to anyone, and
we do not believe that angels rule anywhere.” This tenet was officially promulgated on
9 March 1949 in the Basic Principles of the Government Programe. The first of the
five principles of foreign policy read, “Loyalty to the principles of the United Nations
Charter and friendship with all freedom-loving states, and in particular with the United
States and the Soviet Union.”8
Keeping a balance between East and West was for Ben-Gurion the beginning of
wisdom in foreign policy. His own personal inclination was strongly pro–Western, but
a utilitarian calculation of Israel’s interests made him conceal these inclinations and
cultivate good relations with the Soviet Union. For him, international orientation was
intimately linked to Israel’s basic problem: the hostility of the Arab world. All his life,
Ben-Gurion worried about Israel’s security and its prospects of survival against a vast
and hostile Arab world.9 “There are sixty or seventy million Arabs,” he used to say to
his colleagues, and in his room he had a large map of the Middle East showing the Arab
states in red and tiny Israel in blue. Israel’s integration into the Middle East did not
appear to him as a remotely realistic project. But Israel’s isolation within the Middle
East weighed very heavily on him. External support, especially from the superpowers,
was needed to lessen this isolation, and the policy of non-identification was designed
to maximize external support. Despite his strong pro–Western leanings, Ben-Gurion
therefore avoided for as long as he could an explicit diplomatic identification with the
West.
The abandonment of non-identification was a gradual process and was largely forced
on Israel by external circumstances.10 Initially, Israel escaped from the paradoxes and
xxx cj853a-07 July 20, 2004 18:39
660 Avi Shlaim
contradictions of its place in the world by firmly fixing its orientation on the United
Nations. But disenchantment with the world body and the intensification of the Cold
War left it floundering. Moscow’s friendly attitude toward Israel was replaced with a
more critical line, of which only one example was the vote at the United Nations on
9 December 1949 for the internationalization of Jerusalem. Washington, however, was
suspicious of Israel’s links with the Soviet bloc and generally became less tolerant of
non-alignment as the Cold War intensified. Meanwhile, in the Middle East, the efforts at
conciliation ended in failure, and the arms race continued at a disturbing pace, feeding
fears of a second round.
On 25 May 1950, the United States, Britain, and France issued a joint declaration on
the Middle East. The aim of the Tripartite Declaration, as it came to be known, was to
regulate the supply of arms and to preserve the territorial status quo in the region. In
the context of the Cold War, however, this was essentially an attempt by the Western
powers to establish a monopoly over the supply of arms to the Middle East and to prevent
the Soviet Union from gaining a toehold in the region.11 In Israel, this declaration was
received with mixed feelings: the guarantee of the existing borders was seen as being
of some value in discouraging a second round, but the arms-control regime was seen as
wholly unfavorable to Israel.
Ben-Gurion, in a statement in the Knesset on 31 May 1950, officially welcomed the
initiative of the three Western powers as a modest contribution to security and stability
in the Middle East. In his diary, however, he noted that “[i]t is a matter for surprise
that the press has triumphantly hailed the declaration of the three. The most outstanding
hater of Israel could have signed this declaration. It contains an unqualified permission
for the supply of arms to the Arab states—and there is no obligation whatever to give
arms to Israel. Possibly there is some good in the declaration against the use of force to
change the borders of the armistice agreements, but this cannot be relied upon. All the
rest can be interpreted as giving permission for the supply of arms to the Arabs and a
refusal to give arms to the Jews.”12
The outbreak of the Korean war in June 1950 prompted—or, at least, enabled—
Israel to abandon the policy of non-identification. The decision was made easier for
Israel by the fact that the Soviet Union was allied to the North Korean aggressors
whereas the United States fought under the banner of the United Nations to repel the
aggression and restore the status quo ante. In the Knesset, on 4 July 1950, Ben-Gurion
presented Israel’s vote for the resolution condemning the North Korean aggression
as a vote for the United Nations and for the principles it embodied. He rejected the
suggestion of left-wing members of the Knesset that Israel should abstain, arguing
that Israel was a full-fledged member of the community of nations with a duty to
make a stand, on this as on any other international issue, based on the dictates of its
conscience. His government, however, did not offer to send troops to fight under the
United Nations banner in Korea. The real significance of its stand in the Korean conflict
therefore was that it marked the decisive break at the declaratory level with the policy of
non-identification.
Following the outbreak of the Korean war, Israel moved toward de facto alignment
with the West. In the words of Michael Brecher, a prominent analyst of Israeli foreign
policy, “[T]hat shift was catalyzed by the need for arms and economic aid, rationalised
by the perception of renewed Soviet hostility, and eased by the indifference of the Third
xxx cj853a-07 July 20, 2004 18:39
Israel Between East and West, 1948–56 661
World. The last merits attention, particularly because it is rarely noted in analyses of
Israeli foreign policy, by practitioners and scholars alike.”13
Three factors facilitated Ben-Gurion’s tilt from East to West. First was the dwindling
number of immigrants from Eastern Europe to Israel. These immigrants tended to vote
for Mapai. Once immigration from the Eastern bloc slowed to a trickle, the support and
goodwill of the Soviet Union became less important. Second, Ben-Gurion was desperate
to win the support of the whole of American Jewry, not just of American Zionists, for
the State of Israel. The Zionists were a minority among American Jews. Distancing
Israel from the Soviet Union in the Cold War was a means of enhancing Israel’s appeal
to American Jews. Third, Ben-Gurion sought reparations from the Federal Republic of
Germany for the crimes that Nazi Germany had committed against the Jewish people. He
knew that there was virtually no chance of success in this controversial venture without
American backing.14
Once the policy of non-identification had been abandoned, Ben-Gurion felt free to
approach the United States for arms and for economic assistance in meeting the cost of
absorbing the immigrants who arrived in large numbers from Eastern Europe and from
the Arab countries. He also dropped heavy hints that Israel would like to be included in
any military alliances that the Western powers might develop with the anti-communist
forces in the Middle East.
Toward the end of July 1950, Ben-Gurion informed the American ambassador of
his intention to build with American assistance an army of a quarter of a million men
“capable and anxious” to help the United States, the United Kingdom, and Turkey
in resisting Soviet aggression. He added that if Russia attacked Israel’s strategic air
fields, the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) would be able to hold on until the arrival of the
American and British forces. In his report on this conversation, the American ambassador
underlined that the prime minister could not have been more explicit about his desire to
commit Israel unreservedly to the West.15 Nor can there be any doubt that this message
constituted a fundamental change in the international orientation of the young state.
The tilt toward the West was probably inevitable from the start, but it occurred in a
surprisingly sudden manner.
The first Western country to express interest in defense cooperation with Israel
was not America but Britain. On 19 February 1951, General Sir Brian Robertson,
the commander-in-chief of the British land forces in the Middle East, arrived in
Israel on an official visit. The political thinking behind this visit was conveyed by Sir
William Strang, the permanent under-secretary at the Foreign Office, to Eliahu Elath,
Israel’s ambassador to London, over lunch at the Travellers Club. Strang explained that
Britain was preparing new plans for the defense of the Middle East in the event of
a Soviet attack and that it wanted to include Israel in those plans. The two specific
ideas Strang mentioned were a British base in Gaza with a corridor to Jordan through
Israel and the building of British bases in Israel with a treaty on the basis of complete
equality.
Ben-Gurion rejected the idea out of hand and even called it “an insulting proposal.”
But despite his mistrust of the British in general, and of Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin
in particular, he was prepared to hold secret talks about the defense of the Middle East
and about ways to strengthen Israel’s industrial capacity so that it might be better placed
to contribute to Western defense plans.16
xxx cj853a-07 July 20, 2004 18:39
662 Avi Shlaim
During his visit to Israel, General Robertson had two meetings with the prime minister
and his advisers. Robertson wanted to know whether Israel would join the Western
powers if Soviet aggression looked imminent and whether British forces would be
allowed to go through the country and use its airfields. Ben-Gurion did not answer these
questions directly and merely stressed the importance of developing Israel’s economy
and military power and of resolving the conflict between it and Egypt. At the second
meeting, when General Robertson pressed for answers, Ben-Gurion surprised him by
saying that in an emergency he would see Israel’s role as if it were part of the British☞ Israel’s, correct?
Commonwealth, and that he would want to be treated by the British as such, as if
Israel were Australia or New Zealand. He did not suggest that Israel should join the
Commonwealth but that the relations between the two countries should be developed on
the basis of common values, mutual trust, and genuine equality.
After considerable hesitation, Robertson replied that he was only a soldier and that a
reply to the prime minister’s suggestion could only come from the British government.17
The government’s reply, sent two months later by Herbert Morrison—who in the meantime
had succeeded Bevin as foreign secretary—was lukewarm and failed to address
Ben-Gurion’s main point concerning the establishment of a special relationship between
the two countries.18 All that Britain offered Israel was an association through the back
door in a regional defense organization. This was not good enough for Ben-Gurion, who
insisted on full membership.19
Britain’s special relationship with the Arab states continued to strain its relations with
Israel and to bedevil its plans for the defense of the Middle East. In October 1951, Britain
and America jointly put forward a plan for a Middle East Command. Egypt was invited
to participate as a founding member. Israel was merely promised that its interests would
be taken into account. Even when Egypt declined the invitation, Israel was not asked to
join. The British continued to envisage a largely passive Israeli role in providing bases
and facilities in time of war, whereas the Israelis hoped for a more active role in the
defense plans for the region.
A British military delegation visited Israel in October 1952 but failed to break the
deadlock. Ben-Gurion’s efforts to persuade the Americans to let Israel play a major
role were also to no avail. Faced with insurmountable difficulties, Britain and America
abandoned the idea of a Middle East Command in favor of a more modest plan for a
Middle East Defense Organization. But this plan, too, faded away in the course of 1953
and with it Israel’s hope of becoming integrated into some sort of a military alliance.20
The year 1953 was an eventful one in Israel’s relations with both superpowers. In
that year a Republican administration headed by Dwight Eisenhower came to power
in Washington. All the early signs pointed to a reversal of the Truman administration’s
friendly attitude toward Israel and an attempt to strengthen America’s position in the
Arab world—especially in Egypt, which had been under the rule of the Free Officers
since the revolution of July 1952. To help formulate a new policy toward the Middle
East, John Foster Dulles, the new secretary of state, visited several Arab states and Israel
in May 1953. It was the first visit by an American secretary of state to Israel. His visit
gave Israel’s policy-makers an opportunity to present to the new administration their
thoughts on the defense of the Middle East and to renew their request for American aid.
Prior to Dulles’s arrival in Israel, the Political Committee of Mapai held a meeting
to discuss the country’s foreign policy. Sharett gave a lecture that lasted two hours.
xxx cj853a-07 July 20, 2004 18:39
Israel Between East and West, 1948–56 663
Ben-Gurion formulated in writing thirteen assumptions and read them out. The first
assumption was that Israel could not remain neutral in the event of a third world war,
because even temporary occupation by Russia would sound the death knell of Zionism
and the State of Israel. Second, if war broke out, Britain and America would need
Israel almost as much as Israel would need them. Third, there was a tremendous difference
between Israel’s military and political value to the free world: the former was
great; the latter was nearly zero, in contrast to the Arabs, whose military value was
almost zero whereas their political value was huge. Fourth, military value is discovered
only in wartime—hence, the political dangers awaiting Israel. Fifth, only the fear
of imminent war would induce the new world to turn to Israel. Sixth, Israel needed
immediate military aid and not only in the event of a world war, because it faced an
Arab danger, as well. Seventh, any arms given to the Arabs would be used against
Israel, whether or not a world war broke out. Eighth, England could no longer be a
decisive power in the Middle East either in peacetime or in wartime. Ninth, England’s
policy in the Middle East was hostile to Israel, and this had to be made clear in talks
with the Americans. Tenth, in relation to America, Israel had two levers: its military
significance in the Middle East and the power of American Jewry. Eleventh, peace
was the supreme interest of the State of Israel, but it was essential that America (and
the Arab League) know that they could not discuss with Israel territorial concessions,
the internationalization of Jerusalem, or the return of the Palestinian refugees. Twelfth,
England could not be given bases in Israel because it would not protect the Israelis and
would only help the Arabs. As for America, it had to be made clear that the whole of
Israel could be a base. Thirteenth, Israel had no interest in a regional arrangement but
only in an arrangement with America or with the whole of the North American Treaty
Organization.21
Underlying this set of assumptions was Ben-Gurion’s despair about forging a special
relationship with Britain and his keen desire to forge a special relationship with what he
saw as the rising power in the Middle East, the United States. At a meeting with senior
officials to prepare for Dulles’s visit, Ben-Gurion again unveiled the cornerstone of his
foreign policy: Israel is a Western bastion in the Middle East. The officials present were
asked to stress that Israel was part not of the Middle East but of the West and that they
would fight against any communist attack and consolidate their democratic regime in
all circumstances.22
During his brief visit to Israel, Dulles had a number of meetings, the most important
of which were with the foreign minister and the prime minister. Sharett discussed with
him the main issues in the Arab–Israeli dispute, whereas Ben-Gurion concentrated on
the Soviet threat and Israel’s role in the defense of the region. Two weeks later, on
1 June, Dulles made a major speech in Washington. The speech confirmed Israeli fears
of a new direction in American foreign policy. The main conclusions that emerged from
the speech were that the United States had to do something to dispel the deep anger that
the very creation of Israel had caused in the Arab world, that the policy of the previous
administration had to be changed, and that for the sake of peace both sides would have
to make concessions. In the months that followed, America turned down Israel’s request
for a loan and condemned a number of Israeli actions, such as the moving of the Foreign
Ministry from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the diversion of water from the Jordan River, and
the raid against the Jordanian village Qibya.23
xxx cj853a-07 July 20, 2004 18:39
664 Avi Shlaim
As Israel moved toward a more openly pro–Western position in the Cold War, its
relations with the Soviet bloc suffered further deterioration. In November 1952, a show
trial was conducted in Prague against a number of left-wing Jews and Israelis in the
course of which Zionism was denounced as a reactionary movement and Israel as the
agent of American imperialism. In January 1953, Moscow announced the arrest of
nine doctors, six of them Jewish, on charges of trying to kill Soviet leaders, but this
time Israel was not mentioned. Sharett made a statement in the Knesset on 19 January
severely condemning the Soviet authorities for their anti-Semitic and anti-democratic
practices. This speech was a further step in Israel’s retreat from non-identification.
In the midst of the commotion provoked by the “doctors’ plot,” a bomb was lobbed into
the Soviet Consulate building in Tel Aviv. On 11 February, in response to this incident,
Moscow broke off diplomatic relations with Israel, although it had received an official
apology from the Israeli government. A gradual thaw in Soviet–Israeli relations occurred
after the death of Josef Stalin in March 1953. Israel initiated a dialogue with Moscow that
led to the resumption of diplomatic relations in late July. Jerusalem responded to a Soviet
demand by stating that it would not be a party to any alliance or agreement directed
against the Soviet Union, and the Soviet Union announced its intention to maintain
friendly relations with Israel.24 Although the immediate quarrel was patched up, the rift
between the two countries was probably beyond repair. The policy of non-identification
that had served Israel so well in the early years of independence had been replaced by
an explicit pro–Western position by the end of 1953.
The received wisdom of the Israeli political elite at the time was that the loss of
Soviet cooperation was due to circumstances beyond Israel’s control. Soviet policy
toward the Middle East was said to be determined by what Sharett once termed its
own “developmental logic.” According to this version, the Soviet Union supported
the partition of Palestine and the creation of a Jewish state simply as a means of
undermining the British position in the Middle East. This objective was achieved with
the establishment of the State of Israel, and the subsequent shift in Moscow’s policy
in favor of the Arabs was inevitable. In other words, the rift between Jerusalem and
Moscow was brought about by Moscow, not by Jerusalem.
Uri Bialer has convincingly challenged this deterministic explanation of the course of
Soviet–Israeli relations in the early 1950s. In the first place, he points out, Soviet proxy
military aid to Israel in the form of Czech arms sales continued for longer than would
have been necessary had the Soviet Union merely wished to ensure the creation of a
Jewish state. In Bialer’s opinion, the Soviet attitude toward Israel changed only when
Israel publicly supported the American position on Korea in 1950 and when signs of
Israel’s growing alignment with the United States became unmistakable. In other words,
Soviet aid was related to Israel’s foreign-policy orientation to a greater degree than had
commonly been assumed.25
Israel’s relations with the United States were also affected by some miscalculations
and mistakes. As always, internal politics had a major impact on the country’s external
behavior. Two schools of thought were competing for control over policy in the conflict
with the Arabs: the school of retaliation and the school of negotiation. The former was
led by Ben-Gurion and included virtually the entire defense establishment, while the
latter was led by Sharett and included most of the Foreign Ministry. Sharett became
prime minister as well foreign minister upon Ben-Gurion’s “temporary” retirement in
xxx cj853a-07 July 20, 2004 18:39
Israel Between East and West, 1948–56 665
December 1953. But Moshe Dayan, the newly appointed chief of staff of the Israel
Defense Forces, assumed Ben-Gurion’s mantle as the chief proponent of the policy
of hard-hitting retaliation in response to infiltration across Israel’s borders from the
neighboring Arab states.
The practice of military retaliation had serious consequences for Israel’s relations with
the Great Powers. Both the Eastern and the Western blocs frowned on this practice, and
the four permanent members of the United Nations Security Council frequently voted
for resolutions condemning specific Israeli raids. Sharett’s first year as prime minister
was difficult for Israel both on the diplomatic front and on the day-to-day security front
along the borders. In the course of 1954, Israeli–American relations deteriorated due to
the U.S. decision to supply arms to the Arab states and base its military plans for the
defense of the Middle East increasingly on Iraq and Egypt. Israel, as a consequence,
felt marginalized. Britain’s agreement with Egypt to withdraw its forces from the Suez
Canal Zone was also a cause for concern in Israel. Along Israel’s borders the situation
deteriorated, with more incidents of infiltration, theft, murder, and sabotage, which the
United Nations Truce Supervisory Organization (UNTSO) was unable to prevent. These
developments combined to make Israelis feel isolated and ignored, and this intensified the
conflict between the two approaches. Sharett became active on the American diplomatic
scene in an effort to stop military aid to the Arabs and to procure arms and a security
guarantee for Israel. For Dayan, however, the solution lay in military action to deter the
Arabs.26
In February 1955, Ben-Gurion returned from his desert retreat in Sede-Boker to
assume the defense portfolio in the government headed by Sharett. Sharett spearheaded
the efforts to obtain an American guarantee of Israel’s security. On the need for an
American guarantee there was no real difference between the two leaders. Discussions
between the two countries had started in August 1954 against the background of the
Anglo-Egyptian agreement on Suez and the American decision to supply arms to Iraq.
All that was envisaged at that stage was an American declaration or an exchange of
letters between America and Israel. But after Iraq and Turkey took the first step toward
the Baghdad Pact in early February 1955, Dulles offered Israel a mutual defense pact,
provided that it undertook not to expand its borders by force and refrained from military
retaliation against its neighbors.
Ben-Gurion and Sharett appeared willing to accept the first condition, but they could
not accept the second. A mutual defense pact with a superpower was attractive as a
way of ending Israel’s international isolation, guaranteeing its territorial integrity and
long-term security, and inducing the Arabs to settle peacefully their dispute with the
country. At his very first meeting with Edward Lawson, the new American ambassador,
Ben-Gurion told him that the three things dearest to his heart were the security of Israel,
peace in the Middle East, and friendship between Israel and America. It was in America’s
power, he added, to realize all three things in one move: by concluding a mutual defense
pact with Israel.27
Dayan opposed the idea of a defense pact with America from beginning to end. He
saw no need for an American guarantee of Israel’s security, and he was strongly opposed
to America’s conditions that Israel should forswear territorial expansion and military
retaliation. Military retaliation was regarded by Dayan as life blood. Dayan was at least
consistent in his creed of self-reliance and in his rejection of an external guarantee,
xxx cj853a-07 July 20, 2004 18:39
666 Avi Shlaim
which is more than can be said for Ben-Gurion. The latter was keenly interested in a
pact with the United State but rather reluctant to pay the price for it.
One of Ben-Gurion’s first acts as minister of defense was to order the IDF, on
28 February 1955, to carry out a large-scale attack on the Egyptian military headquarters
in Gaza City—“Operation Black Arrow.” Thirty-eight Egyptian soldiers were killed and
thirty-one were wounded in this devastating attack. The raid seriously destabilized the
military regime headed by Gamal Abdel Nasser. Nasser embarked on a desperate quest
for arms that culminated in the Czech arms deal in September 1955. Thus, by pressing
its military advantage too far, Israel inadvertently helped to push Egypt into the arms
of Moscow. The Gaza raid had far-reaching ramifications both at the regional and
international level. It started a chain of action and reaction, mounting violence, an arms
race, and new alignments with the Great Powers that, within a year, plunged the Middle
East into another major war.
In the aftermath of the Gaza raid, Israeli diplomats shifted the emphasis in the
talks with their American counterparts from a defense pact to the supply of arms. But
once again, Israel’s aggressive military policy toward the Arabs served to confirm the
American refusal to supply arms. This refusal in turn increased the support within
the Israeli defense establishment for the option of a preventive war against Egypt. In
November 1955, Ben-Gurion became prime minister, Sharett reverted to his old post
as foreign minister, and Dayan continued as chief of staff. All three men recognized
that their country’s basic security was affected by the Czech arms deal with Egypt. But
they held very different views about the appropriate policy for preserving the country’s
security. Dayan wanted a preventive war against Egypt; Sharett was firmly opposed to
war; and Ben-Gurion was undecided. It would take a year almost to the day to resolve
this question, and the Sinai Campaign was the answer.
Dayan’s basic assumption was that a second round was inevitable and that Israel
should therefore prepare for war and not for peace.28 His main concern was to ensure
that the timing and conditions of the next war were convenient for Israel. Following the
Czech arms deal, this became a pressing concern. Dayan estimated that the Egyptian
army would be in a position to fight a war in the summer or autumn of 1956. His aim
was to force a showdown before the military balance shifted in Egypt’s favor. He did
not advocate launching a pre-emptive strike because this would have cast Israel in the
role of aggressor. Rather, his strategy was to use military reprisals on a massive scale
to provoke Egypt to go to war before it was ready. The aim of these reprisals was not
to force the Egyptians to keep the border quiet. On the contrary, it was to create the
conditions for an early war. To prepare the IDF for full-scale war, Dayan considered it
essential to keep it constantly engaged in military operations in peacetime. It was no
coincidence that he referred to these reprisals not as retaliation but as peacetime military
operations. In short, Dayan wanted war; he wanted it soon; and he used reprisals both
to goad the Egyptians into war and to prepare his army for that war.29
In sharp contrast to Dayan, Sharett’s basic premise was that war with Egypt was not
inevitable and that everything should be done to prevent it. Realizing the great potential
for escalation inherent in the Arab–Israeli conflict, Sharett urged caution and restraint.
He feared that provocative or careless behavior might lead to a major explosion. He
recognized that the dangers confronting Israel were serious, but he did not think that
Israel’s very survival was on the line. His policy aimed at containing the conflict and
xxx cj853a-07 July 20, 2004 18:39
Israel Between East and West, 1948–56 667
minimizing the risks of escalation.30 Like Dayan, Sharett understood very well that
the policy of reprisals carried a high risk of escalation. The difference was that Dayan
needed escalation to bring about war, whereas Sharett sought to avoid escalation to
prevent war.31
Another major difference between Sharett and Dayan concerned the acquisition of
arms. Both men were, of course, strongly committed to arms procurements for the IDF,
but they went about it in very different ways. Sharett believed that the best chance of
persuading the Western powers to supply arms to Israel lay in abiding by the rules of
international law, cooperating with the United Nations observers, and behaving like a
reasonable and responsible member of the international community. Dayan believed
that, if Israel behaved itself, it would definitely not get arms, whereas if it misbehaved,
it might be given some arms as an incentive to improve its behavior. He thought that
Israel had a nuisance value, and he wanted to capitalize on this to induce the Western
powers to give Israel arms in the hope that it would stay out of mischief. In other words,
he considered military activism a factor that was more likely to help than to hinder the
quest for arms.32
These initial differences over arms acquisition were to develop gradually into two rival
foreign-policy orientations. Although Sharett achieved the first breakthrough in France,
he pinned his highest hopes on America. Sharett’s foreign policy had an American orientation
in that he looked to America for political support, a security guarantee, economic
aid, and arms. Arms acquisition was thus linked to a broader diplomatic strategy of working
closely with America in the Middle East to promote common objectives—notably,
stability and peace. Shimon Peres, the director-general of the Ministry of Defense,
doubted all along that America would supply arms to Israel and worked assiduously to
cultivate the French connection. In doing so, he went not through the normal diplomatic
channels but directly to the French defense establishment. Dayan was quick to join
Peres both in resorting to unorthodox methods and, eventually, in advocating a French
orientation. At the beginning, the question of orientation did not seem relevant to Israel’s
security needs. All of Israel’s leaders agreed on the need to strengthen Israel’s military
capability, and they were willing to take arms from anywhere they could get them. Later
it would emerge that the source did make a considerable difference: France offered arms
in the hope of inducing Israel to go to war against Egypt, whereas America allowed its
allies to supply arms to Israel on condition that Israel did not go to war.
On 2 November 1955, Ben-Gurion presented his new government to the Knesset while
the IDF launched an attack on the Egyptian positions in al-Sabha, killing fifty soldiers
and capturing forty others. Code-named “Volcano,” this attack marked the beginning of
a change in the defense and foreign-policy orientation of the government, which would
develop the drift toward war. In the words of Ben-Gurion’s biographer, “Thus began the ☞ Should this
lengthy quotation
be set as a text
extract?
process of disengagement from the defence policy of Moshe Sharett which was based
on restraint, efforts to communicate and attempts at mediation by foreign bodies—
the United Nations, the powers, Asian and African countries. From this process also
emerged, to a large extent, a new line of policy: gradual turning away from the United
States and drawing closer to France. France, which during those years turned into the
great opponent of the Arab states, and especially of Egypt, also became Israel’s principal
arms supplier along the road to confrontation with the same Egypt. . . . The new policy
line—towards preventive war, towards leaning on France—crossed the previous policy
xxx cj853a-07 July 20, 2004 18:39
668 Avi Shlaim
line, the line of restraint and of reliance on the United States. For a while, it was possible
to discern in the foreign and defence policy of Israel both tendencies at the same time;
at a certain stage, they came into an acute confrontation. But in the end, towards the
summer of 1956, took hold the activist line which led to the Sinai Campaign.”33
In the meantime, the activist policy seriously undermined Sharettt’s efforts to get
closer to the United States with a view to obtaining arms. A striking example of the
negative consequences of the policy of reprisals was provided by Operation Kinneret.
On the night of 11 December, a paratroop brigade under the command of LieutenantColonel
Ariel Sharon raided the Syrian gun positions on the northeastern shore of Lake
Kinneret, better known outside Israel as Lake Tiberias or the Sea of Galilee. This was the
IDF’s fiercest and most brilliantly executed operation since the 1948 war. The paratroop
brigade killed more than fifty Syrians and took thirty prisoners, at the cost to the Israelis
of six dead and fourteen wounded. In the course of the battle, all of the Syrian positions
were reduced to rubble.
The decision to authorize Operation Olive Leaves—the code-name for the operation—
had been taken by Ben-Gurion alone. He had not consulted or informed the cabinet.
Nor had he consulted anyone in the Foreign Ministry. Sharett was on a mission to the
United States in a desperate bid to secure arms, and Ben-Gurion became acting foreign
minister in addition to his other posts. On 27 November, Sharett had called Ben-Gurion
to caution him that any reprisals could damage the negotiations, which had got ten
off to a good start.34 A definite American answer was promised by 12 December, and
Ben-Gurion called Sharett and asked him to stay in Washington until he received the
State Department’s answer. Yet the day before the American answer was due, BenGurion
authorized the assault on the Syrian positions. Sharett’s bitter comment on the
decision-making process was, “Ben-Gurion the defence minister consulted with BenGurion
the foreign minister and received the green light from Ben-Gurion the prime
minister.”35
Ben-Gurion must have known what the American reaction would be when he authorized
the raid. This was presumably his reason for not consulting anyone in the Foreign
Ministry or the cabinet. By authorizing the raid he not only sabotaged Sharett’s efforts
to obtain American arms for Israel but also the orientation on America and the entire
political strategy that went along with it. A popular witticism in IDF circles at the time
was that the biggest explosion of Operation Kinneret was the one that went off under
Sharett.
Sharett himself was incandescent with rage when he heard the news. “My world
became black, the matter of arms was murdered,” he wrote in his diary.36 In a cable of
protest to Ben-Gurion, he did not pull his punches. He concluded the cable by questioning
whether there was one government in Israel, whether it had one policy, and whether its
policy was to sabotage its own efforts and foil its own objectives.37 To Abba Eban,
Israel’s ambassador to Washington, Sharett expressed his suspicion that Ben-Gurion
had sanctioned the Kinneret raid to deny him a personal victory in the quest for arms.
In his autobiography, Eban gives the following account of the crisis:
My own feeling is that whatever remnants existed of Sharett’s ability to work with Ben-Gurion
went up in flames in Galilee that night. I, too, found it impossible to understand how Ben-Gurion
could reconcile two such lines of action. On the one hand he had asked Sharett to make a big effort
xxx cj853a-07 July 20, 2004 18:39
Israel Between East and West, 1948–56 669
to secure a breakthrough on our arms request. On the other hand, he had authorized a military
operation of such strong repercussion as to make an affirmative answer inconceivable. . . . My
discussion with Jerusalem was not a defense of diplomacy against military needs. There was a
clash between two military needs—the need for retaliation and the long-term need for defensive
arms. It seemed to me that the short-term objective had triumphed unduly over our long-term
aims.38
The damage to Israel’s international standing was serious. Some observers even
questioned the sanity of the Israeli policy-makers. The glaring disproportion between
the scale of the Kinneret operation and Syria’s alleged provocation put Israel in a
worse light than usual. In the Security Council debate on this incident, Israel was more
isolated than it had been at any previous debate. All eleven members of the Security
Council outdid one another in denouncing Israel and in expressing their appreciation for
Syrian’s moderation and restraint. On 19 January 1956, the Security Council passed a
resolution that strongly condemned the latest incident, recalled earlier Israeli violations
of the armistice agreements, called on Israel to respect these agreements, and threatened
sanctions in the event of further violations.39
The costliest consequence of the Kinneret raid, however, was the American decision
not to supply arms to Israel. In self-defense, Ben-Gurion argued that Dulles would not
have given arms to Israel even if the raid had not taken place. Sharett and Eban thought
that this was a silly argument because even if Dulles had already made up his mind, it was
a gross mistake for Israel to hand him the perfect excuse for saying “no.” Ben-Gurion
thought that Dulles was simply stringing Israel along over both the security guarantee
and arms. By resorting to military action, Ben-Gurion signaled that, if Israel’s interests
were ignored, it would accept no restraint and behave as it pleased. Sharett and Eban
wanted to wait a few days for the promised reply from Dulles without giving him an
easy out. They felt that Ben-Gurion’s impulsiveness ruined their patient and painstaking
diplomatic groundwork.
The release of the official American documents for this period vindicated Sharett
and Eban and conclusively disproved the claims of Ben-Gurion, Dayan, and the other
defenders of the attack. On the eve of the attack, Dulles had decided to sell arms to Israel.
He distinguished between defensive arms and offensive arms, such as tanks and planes,
and he proposed to deliver the former immediately and the latter at various stages in the
following year. For the time being, he thought, the Tripartite Declaration of 1950 would
give Israel reasonable assurance against being attacked.40 On 13 December, however,
Eban was informed that a decision on Israel’s request for arms had been postponed. The
main reason given for the delay was the recent incident on the border with Syria.41
The official documents also reveal that Dulles was not as hostile to Israel as most
Israelis thought, and that he most certainly did not want to see Israel destroyed. His
view was that efforts to match Israel’s military power to that of all its Arab enemies
would not guarantee its security. Only peace with the Arabs would enable Israel to
survive in the long run. To attain peace, he considered that Israel should be prepared
to make territorial concessions and to take back 100,000 Palestinian refugees. Nor was
Dulles as inflexible on the arms question as the Israelis made him out to be. He did
think that Israel was entitled to receive Western arms of the same quality, if not in the
same quantity, as Egypt was promised by the Soviet Union. But he was anxious to avoid
xxx cj853a-07 July 20, 2004 18:39
670 Avi Shlaim
polarization in the Middle East. He did not want the United States to become Israel’s
sole supplier of offensive arms or to abandon the Arab world to the Soviet Union. His
solution to this problem was to encourage France and Canada to sell arms, and especially
fighter planes, to Israel. The Kinneret raid occurred just as Western policy on arms
supplies was beginning to change in Israel’s favor. It killed the prospect of direct U.S.
military assistance to Israel. Just as the Gaza raid in February had led Egypt to accept
communist arms, the Kinneret raid in December caused Israel to be denied Western
arms.
Throughout the early 1950s, Israel’s leaders set their eyes on the United States as the
most important Western source of economic as well as military support. It was Israel’s
failure to solidify a partnership with the United States that motivated it to seek ties with
France and Britain.42 America’s rejection of Israel’s request for arms had two major consequences:
it intensified the drive to procure weapons from France, and it increased the
internal political pressure for a pre-emptive strike against Egypt. The conflict between
the moderates and the activists was fueled in the spring of 1956 by the conflict over
the French connection. Sharett, the leading advocate of the Anglo-Saxon orientation,
fought a losing battle against the chief proponents of the French connection: Peres and
Dayan.43 Since the alliance with France was predicated on Israel’s willingness to go to
war against Egypt, the debate over orientation merged with the other great debate on the
question of preventive war.
Ben-Gurion was a slow convert to the French orientation, but once his mind was
made up, he acted with characteristic speed and decisiveness in transferring complete
control over the acquisition of arms from the Foreign Ministry to the Ministry of
Defense and in authorizing Dayan to go ahead with secret negotiations in France on farreaching
cooperation, including joint war operations against Egypt.44 A week later, BenGurion
forced Sharett’s resignation from the government, thereby clearing the decks for
war.
The war against Egypt was intimately connected with the French orientation in Israel’s
foreign policy. Ben-Gurion had temporarily dropped the idea of a preventive war against
Egypt in the early months of 1956. America’s final rejection of Israel’s request for arms
in April was a turning point for him. From that point onward, he looked to France to
satisfy Israel’s needs for modern arms. Ben-Gurion did not choose France as an arms
supplier and as an ally in preference to America. It was only after the hope of receiving
American arms had evaporated that he turned to France. The emergence of a French
orientation in Israel’s foreign policy was thus not a matter of deliberate choice but the
result of the failure of the American orientation.45 The idea of preventive war re-emerged
in the context of the ever closer relations with France.
The relationship between Israel and France began with the supply of arms, developed
into political and military cooperation, and reached its climax in the joint war against
Egypt. Having a common enemy in Egypt brought the two countries closer together.
France was hostile toward the Soviet-backed revolutionary regime in Cairo because of
its encouragement of the rebellion in Algeria. In the early months of 1956, Egypt stepped
up its support for the Algerian rebels who were fighting through the Front de Liberation
Nationale for independence from France. The French military were completely
preoccupied with the Algerian problem. Their three top priorities were Algeria, Algeria,
and Algeria. They assumed that if only Colonel Nasser—Hitler on the Nile, as they
xxx cj853a-07 July 20, 2004 18:39
Israel Between East and West, 1948–56 671
called him—could be knocked out of the game, the Algerian rebellion would collapse.
There was no solid basis for this assumption, but the Israelis nevertheless encouraged it.
And as the Algerian rebellion gathered momentum, the French government became less
inhibited about supplying arms to Israel in contravention of the Tripartite Declaration
of May 1950 of which France had been a signatory alongside Britain and the United
States.46
But the French expected their pound of flesh. Their arms supplies to Israel were
motivated not by altruism or socialist solidarity but by self-interest. The Israelis, for
their part, had few illusions. “France will give us arms,” Dayan bluntly told Ben-Gurion,
“only if we give it serious help in the Algerian matter. Serious help means killing
Egyptians, nothing less.”47 In conversations with the French military, Dayan dwelled on
the danger that Nasser posed to the entire Middle East and North Africa. Nasser’s goal,
he stated, was to eliminate all European influence from the region and to turn Egypt into
a forward base for Soviet power. The solution to this problem lay in the elimination of
Nasser.48
The idea of a coordinated military offensive against Egypt gathered momentum after
Nasser’s nationalization of the Suez Canal Company on 26 July 1956. Nasser’s blow was
aimed at the Western powers, not at Israel. Britain and France were most directly affected
because they were the principal shareholders in the Suez Canal Company. America and
Britain urged Israel to keep out of this dispute. Britain in particular was anxious to
keep its quarrel with Nasser from getting mixed up with the Arab–Israeli dispute. But
the French were equally anxious to enlist Israel’s services in the war they were now
determined to launch to topple Nasser.
Here a problem arose. Israel was not prepared to go to war against Egypt without
French participation. France was not prepared to act against Egypt without British
participation. Britain was committed to joint military action with France but insisted on
excluding Israel. To get out of this quandary, the French assumed the role of matchmaker
in bringing Britain and Israel together. By the end of October 1956, the tripartite war
plot against Egypt had been hatched.49
The story of the collusion and of the collision at Suez has been told many times
and need not be repeated here. One point worth noting in the context of the Cold War,
however, is that by joining Britain and France in the war against Egypt, Israel brought
upon itself the wrath of both superpowers. The Eisenhower administration put heavy
pressure on Israel to carry out a complete withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula and
the Gaza Strip. Dulles led the pack against the three aggressors at the United Nations.
The Soviet Union was not slow to join in the fray. On 6 November, Nikolai Bulganin, the
Soviet premier, sent letters to Britain, France, and Israel, threatening them with rocket
attacks and promising volunteers to help the Egyptian army. The letter to Ben-Gurion
was particularly brutal in its language. It accused the government of Israel of “criminally
and irresponsibly playing with the fate of the world” and of placing in question the very
existence of the State of Israel. In his diary Ben-Gurion recorded that the letter could
have been written by Adolf Hitler.50 The letter was accompanied by a war of nerves and
rumors of preparations for Soviet military intervention. Yosef Avidar, the ambassador to
Moscow who was in Israel at the time, assured Ben-Gurion that Bulganin was bluffing.51
Ben-Gurion, however, was haunted by the fear of a Soviet air attack throughout the crisis.
And he could not discount the risk that the crisis might escalate overnight into a potential
xxx cj853a-07 July 20, 2004 18:39
672 Avi Shlaim
global war for which Israel would be held responsible.52 He caved in and ordered the
IDF to withdraw.
Israel’s position in the Cold War thus underwent remarkable change in a relatively
short period. At its birth, Israel enjoyed the blessing and support of both of the principal
Cold War protagonists. Consequently, during the first two years of its existence, Israel
pursued a policy of non-identification in the struggle between the two rival blocs. But
given its cultural affinity and economic dependence on the West, the tilt toward the
West was probably inevitable. The outbreak of the Korean war provided the occasion,
if not the cause, for the abandonment of the posture of non-identification. Over the next
few years, Israel made strenuous efforts to integrate itself into the military plans of the
Western powers. Its most notable success lay in forging the secret pact with Britain and
France to launch the war against Egypt. But this success, if that is what it was, turned
into a nemesis, for it brought upon Israel the wrath of both of its original godfathers.
Israel’s position between East and West had come full circle.
N O T E S
Author’s note: I thank the British Academy for awarding me a Research Professorship for 2003–2006 to
work on “The Great Powers and the Middle East Since World War I.”
1Simha Flapan, The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities (London: Croom Helm, 1987); Benny Morris,
The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947–1949 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987);
Ilan Papp´e, Britain and the Arab–Israeli Conflict, 1947–51 (London: Macmillan, 1988); and Avi Shlaim,
Collusion Across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement, and the Partition of Palestine (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1988).
2“The Debate About 1948,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 27 (1995): 287–304; repr. in Ilan
Papp´e, ed., The Israel/Palestine Question (London: Longman, 1999).
3Ilan Papp´e, The Making of the Arab–Israeli Conflict, 1947–1951 (London: I. B. Tauris, 1992); Benny
Morris 1948 and After: Israel and the Palestinians, rev. ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994); idem, Israel’s
Border Wars, 1949–1956: Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation, and the Countdown to the Suez War (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1993); idem, Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist–Arab Conflict, 1881–1999 (New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999); and Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (New York: W. W.
Norton, 2000).
4A particularly important collection of official documents is G. Gorodetsky, J. Freundlich, D. Yaroshevsky
Stegny, et al., Documents on Israeli–Soviet Relations, 1941–1953, 2 vols. (London: Frank Cass, 2000).
5Interview with Michael Comay, 2 May 1982, Jerusalem.
6On the internal debate, see Uri Bialer, Between East and West: Israel’s Foreign Policy Orientation,
1948–1956 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
7Michael Brecher, The Foreign Policy System of Israel: Setting, Images, Process (London: Oxford University
Press, 1972), 40.
8Ibid., 39–40.
9Zaki Shalom, David Ben-Gurion, the State of Israel, and the Arab World, 1948–1956 (Brighton: Sussex
Academic Press, 2002).
10Gideon Rafael, Destination Peace: Three Decades of Israeli Foreign Policy (New York: Stein and Day,
1981), 22–25.
11Robert Danin, “The Rise and Fall of Arms Control in the Middle East, 1947–1955: Great Power Consultation,
Co-ordination, and Competition” (D.Phil. thesis, Oxford University, 1999).
12Ben-Gurion diary, 30 May 1950, Ben-Gurion Archive, Sede-Boker, Israel.☞ “. . . entry dated 30
May. . .”?
☞ Israel, correct?
13Brecher, Foreign Policy System of Israel, 561.
14I am grateful to Ronald Zweig of Tel Aviv University for making these points in his commentary on my
paper at the conference The Cold War in the Mediterranean, Cortona, Italy, 5–6 October 2001.
15Foreign Relations of the United States, 1950 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1979),
5:960–61 (hereafter, FRUS).
xxx cj853a-07 July 20, 2004 18:39
Israel Between East and West, 1948–56 673
16Interview with Eliahu Elath, 8 August 1982, Jerusalem; Ben-Gurion diary, 27 January 1951.
17Meeting of David Ben-Gurion and Brian Robertson, 21 February 1951, Jerusalem, in Yemima Rosenthal,
ed., Documents on the Foreign Policy of Israel (Jerusalem: Israel State Archives, 1991), 6:129–35.
18Morrison to Ben-Gurion, 23 April 1951, in Rosenthal, Documents, 262.
19Interview with Michael Comay, 2 May 1982, Jerusalem.
20Yehoshua Freundlich, ed., Documents on the Foreign Policy of Israel 1952 (Jerusalem: Israel State
Archives, 1992), 7:xiv.
21Ben-Gurion diary, 28 March 1953.
22Ben-Gurion’s diary, 30 April 1953.
23Yehoshua Freundlich, ed., Documents on the Foreign Policy of Israel (Jerusalem: Israel State Archives,
1995), 9:xii.
24Ibid., xx.
25Bialer, Between East and West, 147, 179, 197.
26Moshe Dayan, Milestones: An Autobiography (in Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Yediot Aharonot, 1976), 139.
27“Israel’s Policy Towards the Western Powers: Conclusions of the Conference of Ambassadors,” 7 June
1955, Israel State Archives (hereafter, ISA), 2446/8; and Ben-Gurion diary, 12 May 1955.
28Motti Golani, Israel in Search of a War: The Sinai Campaign, 1955–1956 (Brighton: Sussex Academic
Press, 1998).
29Interview with Colonel Mordechai Bar-On, 3 August 1982, Jerusalem.
30Gabriel Sheffer, Moshe Sharett: Biography of a Political Moderate (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996).
31Yair Evron, “The Inter-Relationship Between Foreign Policy and Defence Policy in the Years 1949–1955”
(in Hebrew), Skira Hodshit 35 (1988).
32Interview with Bar-On, 3 August 1982.
33Michael Bar-Zohar, Ben-Gurion: A Political Biography (in Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1977), 3:1153.
34Sharett to Ben-Gurion, 27 November 1955, ISA, 2454/11.
35Entry dated 16 December 1955 in Moshe Sharett, A Personal Diary (in Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Ma’ariv,
1978), 5:1310.
36Entry dated 10 December 1955, in ibid., 1307.
37Sharett to Ben-Gurion, 12 December 1955, ISA, 2454/11.
38Abba Eban, An Autobiography (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1977), 199.
39Weekly Survey no. 198, 25 January 1956, probably written by Gideon Rafael, ISA, 2454/11.
40Secretary of State to Under-Secretary of State (Hoover), memorandum 12 December 1955, FRUS (1955),
14:848–49.
41Memorandum of a Conversation, Department of State, 13 December 1955, FRUS (1955), 14:856–57.
42Zach Levey, Israel and the Western Powers, 1952–1960 (Chapel Hill: North Carolina University Press,
1997).
43Shimon Peres, David’s Sling: The Arming of Israel (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1970).
44Dayan, Milestones, 200.
45Interview with Gershon Avner, 4 July 1982, Jerusalem.
46Maurice Vaisse, “France and the Suez Crisis,” in William Roger Louis and Roger Owen, ed., Suez
1956: The Crisis and Its Consequences (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 131–43; Maurice Vaisse, ed.,
La France et l’Operation de Suez de 1956 (Paris: Addim, 1997).
47Mordechai Bar-On, Challenge and Quarrel: The Road to the Sinai Campaign—1956 (in Hebrew)
(Beersheba: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press, 1991), 148.
48Dayan, Milestones, 205–207.
49Avi Shlaim, “The Protocol of S`evres, 1956: Anatomy of a War Plot,” International Affairs 73 (1997):
509–30, repr. in The 1956 War: Collusion and Rivalry in the Middle East, ed. David Tal (London: Frank Cass,
2001), 119–43.
50Ben-Gurion diary, 7 November 1956.
51Interview with Major-General Yosef Avidar, 11 August 1982, Jerusalem.
52Moshe Zak, Forty Years of Dialogue with Moscow (in Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Ma’ariv, 1988), 180.