The_Info_Web/10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Charles de Gaulle.md

category	tags	summary	born	died	location
Political Figure	Person Politician Israel Military	Charles de Gaulle was a French general and statesman who led the Free French Forces during World War II and later founded the Fifth Republic, serving as its first President from 1959 to 1969.	1890-11-22	1970-11-09	Lille, France

Charles de Gaulle was a French general and statesman who led the Free French Forces during World War II and later founded the Fifth Republic, serving as its first President from 1959 to 1969. He was emphatically in favor of an independent nuclear deterrent for France.¹

De Gaulle won a seven-year term as president of France's newly constituted Fifth Republic in December 1958 by promising to find an acceptable compromise for ending the war in Algeria. The war sharply divided the nation, and other issues, such as continued support for Israel, seemed secondary.¹

De Gaulle responded to the Six-Day War in 1967 by accusing Israel of being the aggressor and canceling all of France's arms sales to Israel, abrogating twelve years of close French support. He also delayed the pending shipment of fifty previously purchased Mirage III jet fighters. He even claimed to newsmen that he had not known of Dassault's contract with Israel until the first field test in 1967 of the Jericho I missile.¹

Embargo and the Dassault contract

A footnote to a Central Intelligence Agency Special National Intelligence Estimate of August 10, 1967 states that "On 2 June 1967, France imposed an embargo in shipments of military items to the Middle East, but the embargo does not apply to spare parts previously contracted for," and that "there probably has been some evasion of the ban."² A Control Group paper dated by the editors of the Foreign Relations of the United States to June 17, 1967 states that Israel had a contract with the French firm Dassault Company for the MD-620 missile, with a range of 250 nautical miles, and may already have contracted for or expressed interest in as many as 250 of them.³ On June 27, 1967, the American ambassador Walworth Barbour wrote from Tel Aviv that if the French embargo continued and delivery of the Dassault missile were precluded, the "quite possible effect would be to stimulate Israeli missile production."⁴

Footnotes

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1. Hersh, Seymour M. The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy. Random House, 1991. Chapter 3, 13. ↩︎

2. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968, vol. XIX, Document 414, footnote 3, Special National Intelligence Estimate, August 10, 1967. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v19/d414 ↩︎

3. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968, vol. XIX, Document 305, Paper Submitted by the Control Group, undated (dated June 17, 1967 by the editors), with annex. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v19/d305 ↩︎

4. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968, vol. XIX, Document 326, Telegram 4311 from the Embassy in Israel (Barbour) to the Department of State, June 27, 1967. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v19/d326 ↩︎