The Gaullist surprise victory at yesterday’s parliamentary elections seems to indicate that there is little likelihood of any major change in France’s Middle East policy. The Gaullists won 267 parliamentary seats out of a total of 490 and can now form the new French government without help from the centrist “Reformers” of Rouen Mayor Jean Lecanuet. The Reform Party, the most friendly to Israel and the only one to have included the Middle East on its electoral platform, only won 28 seats in the new House.
Observers here believe that even if the Reformers should eventually join the government, they will do so from a position of weakness and will not be able to pose any major conditions. In case of Reform-Gaullist negotiations, the centrist party will concentrate, observers here believe, on issues it considers more vital, such as European integration and the defense of the franc, now threatened by the dollar crisis.
The only positive points seen by pro-Israeli circles is the relative weakness of the die-hard Gaullist elements within the majority ranks and Foreign Minister Maurice Schumann’s failure to be reelected to the House. As a result, it is practically certain that Schumann will not be reappointed to his former Cabinet post in the new government. Within the majority, the traditional Gaullists, the Union for the Defense of the Republic, have lost 89 seats. The weight of the more moderate elements such as the Independent Republicans of Finance Minister Valery Giscard d’Estang and the Democratic Center Party of Culture Minister Jacques Duhamel, has relatively increased.
Little change in foreign affairs is nonetheless expected as this is traditionally in the Fifth Republic a “presidential reserved domain.” Observers here tend to believe that the new minister for foreign affairs will be a traditional Gaullist who will continue to carry out the President’s instructions. Another prominent Gaullist generally associated with France’s anti-Israeli policies not. to be reelected was former Paris Deputy Michel Habib-Deloncle.
A large number of Israel’s friends were reelected, however. Foremost among these were the two Reformist leaders Jean Lecanuet and Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, Gen. Pierre Stehlin and Gen. Ghislain de Benouville–both in Paris–and Jewish Deputy Claude Gerard Marcus. Jacques Soustelle, a former minister and a long-standing friend of Israel, also successfully managed his political comeback in the city of Lyons.
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