French President Francois Mitterrand, riding a crest of popularity at home and wielding powerful influence in the European Community, is weighing future French policy in the Middle East in a mood of anger and disillusionment with Israel.
The 75-year-old French leader, long a staunch friend of the Jewish state, appears to be “personally hurt” by what he considers its unjustified attacks on France, which he is certain “were inspired from high up” in the Israeli government.
The Israelis, he believes, are using unfair tactics to discredit traditional French policy in the Middle East.
France favors the convening of an international peace conference immediately after the Persian Gulf was to settle regional issues, including Israel’s disputes with the Palestinians and Arabs generally.
As France envisions it, the participants would be the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, the interested states and the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Israel, which adamantly opposes that scenario, says it amounts to a surrender to Saddam Hussein’s demand to link his invasion of Kuwait with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
When Israel accused France and French firms of helping Iraq improve the range of its Scud missiles so they could hit Israel, Mitterrand dispatched agents of France’s two top security agencies to Tel Aviv to check the charges.
CLEARED FRANCE OF COLLABORATION
They reported back that Israeli experts agreed with their findings, which cleared France of any collaboration with Iraq.
Mitterrand is upset by what he considers Israel’s ingratitude for past support and because, he says, it was an Israeli foreign minister who convinced him an international conference was the best solution.
By that, he is probably referring to his meeting with Shimon Peres, leader of Israel’s Labor Party, after Peres’ secret April 1987 rendezvous in London with Jordan’s King Hussein.
“The only thing wrong,” said one French source, “is that the president still sticks to the original plan, which the Israelis have since dropped and now energetically oppose.”
The main concern of Israeli diplomats and the Jewish community is that Mitterrand will revert to Charles de Gaulle’s Middle East policies, which had a decidedly pro-Arab tilt.
Unlike other world leaders, Mitterrand is said to pay scant attention to war news from the Gulf. He does not watch CNN or listen to the radio, but relies for his information on the newspapers and personal reports presented each morning by his chief of staff, Jean-Pierre Bianco.
In the evenings, he is briefed by a select group of ministers, senior army officers and the heads of the secret services. He was not awakened in the middle of the night when the first allied air raids on Baghdad began or when the first Iraqi Scuds hit Israel.
But Mitterrand has committed 12,000 French troops to the Gulf, knowingly endangering France’s important economic and political bases in the Arab would, especially its close ties with North Africa.
The reason is that he wants a “permanent seat” at the negotiating table after the war, where he would speak not only for France but for 11 of the 12 E.C. member states.
The 12th member, Britain, he feels, has bound itself too tightly to the United States.
Nevertheless, only last week the French foreign minister, Roland Dumas, and British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd agreed in London, in a little-publicized development, to appoint a joint Anglo-French group to lay the groundwork for a postwar settlement in the Middle East, including an international conference.
MIGHT GO THE LIMIT
While Britain has some reservations over the degree of pressure to be applied, Mitterrand might decide to go the limit. European pressure on Israel, if determined, could have a telling effect.
Western Europe, after all, is Israel’s biggest trading partner, as well as a major source of scientific and cultural exchanges. It also controls a large bloc of U.N. votes.
But even if the Americans and British try to squeeze France out of the postwar negotiations, Mitterrand will speak from a position of strength.
His popularity at home is at an all-time high. Over 70 percent of the French approve of his leadership, and were elections to be held now, he could be sure of an overwhelming victory.
Meanwhile, the Arab lobby is pressing hard for a tougher French position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It cites France’s favorable trade balance with the Arab world, which yielded a net profit of $2 billion in 1989.
Israel’s friends say that France can make its voice heard in the Arab world only if it remains close to Israel. They also argue the moral and ethical considerations to which Mitterrand has been highly receptive in the past.
COULD REVIVE ARAFAT POLITICALLY
Israel and its friends are also concerned that Mitterrand could revive the fortunes of the PLO, now at their lowest ebb since Yasir Arafat declared his support for Saddam Hussein.
Should he so decide, the French president could endow the PLO with new international credibility and legitimacy.
To save Arafat politically needs little more than an invitation to the European Parliament in Strasbourg or to the E.C.’s executive body, the European Commission, in Brussels, followed by Paris and a grand tour of other major European capitals.
Meanwhile, not a single Israeli minister has come to Paris for high-level talks since the Gulf war started. The Israeli ambassador in Paris, Ovadia Soffer, has met Mitterrand only once in recent weeks at a public reception.
Israel’s friends suggest that Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir do something to cultivate the French leader before his policy hardens and it is too late.
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