Mordechai Gazit, Israel’s Ambassador to France, will meet Friday with French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing in what is considered a major step towards the normalization of relations after the Abu Daoud affair.
The Eiysee spokesman said the meeting will be devoted “to an examination of peaceful solutions to the Middle East conflict” but Israeli sources stressed that what Israel wants to hear is an explanation of the Daoud affair.
In spite of Israeli insistence that the Daoud incident has not yet been erased or forgotten, France and Israel already seem on the way to a near normalization of their ties. French and Israeli experts are expected to start reviewing the Franco-Israeli extradition agreement before the end of the month.
Meanwhile Israel and France jointly have agreed to postpone French Foreign Minister Louis de Guiringaud’s forthcoming trip to Israel by one month. Israeli Foreign Minister Yigal Allon and de Guiringaud, who met yesterday in Brussels, decided that the trip originally scheduled for Feb. 27 will take place on March 30. Though neither side officially commented on this decision it was obviously taken as an additional proof of Israel’s dissatisfaction with France’s release of Daoud. De Guiringaud and Allon met for more than an hour after Allon signed Israel’s financial agreement with the European Economic Community (EEC).
Their meeting, in spite of the existing tension between the two countries, started off well when the two ministers realized, while exchanging a few personal remarks, that they had fought during World War II on the same side, on the same battle fields and at more or less the same time. De Guiringaud served with the Free French Forces in Syria while Allon, a Palmach commander, helped the British army in its junction with Charles de Gaulle’s troops.
The two ministers agreed to do their best to normalize relations between the two countries. Allon and de Guiringaud also examined the entire Middle East situation but paid special interest to the bilateral relations between France and Israel.
The Israeli minister also held separate talks at his hotel with the Foreign Ministers of Holland, Belgium, Denmark. West Germany, Britain, Ireland and Italy. Before returning to Israel today, he was due to meet with the leaders of the Belgian Jewish community.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
