Ambassador in Paris: three crises

His part: As ambassador in Paris, 1976‎–‎1979, Gazit steered Israel’s relations with France through three crises: Entebbe, Abu Daoud and the Iraqi reactor.

During the Entebbe hostage crisis in July 1976, after an Air France plane from Tel Aviv was hijacked to Uganda, Gazit represented Israel in contacts with the French government. He conveyed Israel’s request for negotiations to secure the hostages’ release, including discussion of releasing prisoners, as JTA reported at the time.

He conducted the contacts with the French government together with security adviser Sami Dogan; during them the hijackers agreed to postpone their ultimatum to 4 July — time that allowed the rescue operation to be prepared.

After the operation, the diplomat Freddy Eytan recalls, Edmond Giscard d’Estaing, the French President’s father, telephoned Gazit and told him: “Israël a sauvé l’honneur du monde” — Israel has saved the honour of the world.

His time in France included the crisis following Abu Daoud’s release in 1977. Abu Daoud was one of the planners of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, in which eleven Israeli athletes were murdered, and France freed him a few days after his arrest in Paris.

Gazit was recalled to Israel for consultations — according to Freddy Eytan, a step without precedent in Israeli diplomacy. To allow his return, President Giscard ordered his ministers to avoid hasty statements and not to speak of a Palestinian state.

On 4 February 1977 he returned to Paris, and three days later he met Foreign Minister Louis de Guiringaud for an hour of “frank” explanations, in JTA’s words. They agreed to review the extradition treaty between the two countries, so that such an affair would not happen again.

Another sensitive issue was the reactor France was building for Iraq, which later became the “Osirak” reactor that Israel bombed in 1981. Gazit went back to Foreign Minister de Guiringaud again and again.

On 15 July 1977 he asked France to supply Iraq with an alternative “Caramel” fuel, low-enriched uranium that cannot be made into a weapon, instead of the highly enriched uranium it had been promised. On 13 January 1978 he asked that delivery be delayed until the alternative fuel was tested.

And on 19 October 1978 he asked outright: when would France deliver weapons-grade uranium to Iraq? Three years later, in 1981, the Israeli Air Force bombed the reactor.

In its farewell report in July 1979, Le Monde praised his courtesy and the French he had learned.

At the farewell luncheon on 26 July 1979 he replied to Foreign Minister François-Poncet.

According to the record of his words, kept in the file he later deposited at the Davis Institute (State Archives, A-7790/16), he said: “We diplomats claim that we conduct a dialogue, and perhaps we are even convinced of it, but it is not so. In fact we conduct two monologues.”

And of Israel he said that it holds “50 per cent of the keys to the door of peace. I stress: 50 per cent, and not 51 per cent” (site translations).12 sources+

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