The French Connection

What a difference a war makes. The Bush administration, long dismissive of multilateral diplomatic moves, especially with "Old Europe," worked closely with France to bring a diplomatic resolution to the war between Israel and Hezbollah. Now, it looks like these efforts may pay off, with an initial agreement at the U.N. for the U.S.-French sponsored resolution, and acceptance by the warring parties.

If the U.N. agreement holds, this will be due in no small part to Israel's acceptance of the U.S./French document, which partly stems from the Israeli government's realizaton that they need to move in another direction if they are going to achieve their aim of squelching Hezbollah. The Israeli street began to turn last week, with the Peace Now movement beginning demonstrations against the war for the first time. The movement's leaders had overwhelmingly supported Israel's initial response -- to defend the country's international borders. But the growing sense of optimism that a diplomatic deal might help achieve the goal of securing Israel's northern border against Hezbollah attacks have combined with concerns about both the damage exacted on Lebanon itself and the prospects of a drawn-out war that could take hundreds of Israeli casualties. So the peace camp had been pushing the Israeli government to accept a diplomatic deal. And as the process moves forward, France (and the European Union) will be a key player.

The American right may not like France, but the country can and will make a difference in the region. Though France is widely recognized as a friend to the Arab world, it also has the largest Jewish population on the European continent -- 700,000 strong. It's a community that, in the last few years especially, has experienced a growing engagement and attachment to Israel (a development likely related to widely publicized incidents of anti-Semitism in France). During the Second Intifada (2000-2004), when American Jews thought twice about flying to Israel for vacation due to security concerns, French Jews didn't have the same qualms. In 2002, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon made an infamous comment imploring French Jews to leave France en masse to move to Israel, to be safe from anti-Semitism. Sharon made that comment to a group of American Jewish leaders, ensuring that it got terrific play in the U.S. press and fueled anti-French sentiment here. But it infuriated the French Jewish community. Even though more French Jews have indeed moved to Israel in recent years, most only come for visits and are quite content (as they told Sharon then) to live in their home country and work through the problems there.

Their numbers fill the hotels along Tel Aviv's beach strip, and more and more of them have bought second homes. Today, Tel Aviv hotels feature menus in English and French and French TV along with CNN on the cable boxes. French can be heard as readily as English and Hebrew in cities like Tel Aviv, Netanya, and elsewhere.

French Jewish community leaders have asserted themselves almost as forcefully as the American Jewish leadership, pushing their government to engage with Israel. Shortly after the war with Hezbollah broke out, I happened upon two back-to-back solidarity missions at a Tel Aviv hotel, one comprised of American Jewish leadership and the other of French Jewish leaders. Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz addressed the French gathering. (The majority of French Jews today have ancestry from North Africa, including Morocco, which is where Peretz himself was born). And it was not surprising to see Bernard-Henri Levy recently writing about his wartime visit to Israel in The New York Times Magazine; Levy and other major French-Jewish intellectuals are engaged with Israel, and usually align with the peace camp.