De Gaulle Without Gaullism
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
The big news in Paris may have been the release on December 21 of the two journalists kidnapped by Iraqi terrorists and their return to a military airport in France, where they were greeted with much fanfare by President Chirac and Prime Minister Raffarin. Close observers of the French political scene, however, took notice of the visit to Israel one week earlier by Nicolas Sarkozy, who had served in both of Mr. Raffarin’s governments as interior minister and then as finance minister before resigning to take up the post of president of France’s ruling party.
Mr. Sarkozy received 81.5% of the vote in his dramatic victory in the leadership election of Mr. Chirac’s party, the UMP; this despite the widely accepted impression that he intends to challenge either Mr. Chirac for the presidential nomination in 2007 or Mr. Chirac’s hand-picked successor, should the president decide not to compete for a third term. Mr. Sarkozy’s ambitions are not the only manifestation of his new approach to French politics. Somewhat of an outsider, he does not belong to the old-boy network that dominated French political life; and he is, for a leading French politician, remarkably upbeat about America and Israel.
This is all the more remarkable because for several decades, being pro-American has guaranteed a ticket to the French political sidelines, not the presidency. But Mr. Sarkozy seems to be banking that French voters will respond to his can-do, shake-things-up image acquired during his tenure running the key interior and finance ministries.
A June BVA/Marianne presidential poll had Mr. Sarkozy defeating two high-profile prospective center-left candidates – a former finance minister, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, and a former prime minister, Laurent Fabius. The Socialists may be looking to nominate a third man, party secretary-general Francois Hollande. But a September Ipsos/Le Point survey had Mr. Sarkozy as the top-rated politician in the country with a 60% approval rating, well ahead of Mr. Chirac at 49% and Mr. Raffarin at 36%.
Mr. Sarkozy has quietly criticized Mr. Chirac’s pro-Arab tilt, telling fellow party members that as president he would center French policy, attracting significant support from within the Jewish community. At the same time, he has reached out to the country’s far more numerous Muslim population with original proposals that put him at odds with the establishment – like his proposal that the republic pay for mosques and imams in order to wipe out the large number of underground prayer gatherings run by extremists, as well as his support for “positive discrimination,” French for affirmative action.
Already seen as a champion – some say, the champion – in the French fight against anti-Semitism, Mr. Sarkozy has now gone public on Israel in an interview he gave a Jewish newspaper before departing for the Jewish state and in the address he delivered at the Herzliya conference. Asked by the Tribune Juive to compare his views on “the creation of a Palestinian state” with those of Foreign Minister Barnier, who has called it “an emergency,” Mr. Sarkozy replied that it was “an emergency as much as the right for Israel to be safe.”
He appeared to endorse the call for an end to Palestinian terror as a precondition to diplomatic activity, because, “in Israel the questions are about the existence of the state.” Mr. Sarkozy wants the Americans to “be more present” in Israel-Palestine peacemaking (or friction-reducing), and says Europe can play a bigger role by “creat[ing] economic development.”
Between the interview and the Herzliya speech, Mr. Sarkozy had some nice things to say about Benjamin Netanyahu, Shimon Peres, and even Ariel Sharon. He told Tribune Juive that separation (or disengagement) was the preferred solution, rather than the Oslo dream of a full-fledged peace treaty, still supported by the rival Socialist Party: “I plead for the divorce option by mutual consent.” At Herzliya, he endorsed Mr. Netanyahu’s “courageous policy of structural reforms” as “the pledge of increased competitiveness and durable growth.”
His feet left the ground just a bit as he proposed, Peres-like, that Israelis consider “a Common Market of the Mediterranean of the East, with Israel, the future Palestinian state, and Jordan.” And, mirabile dictum, he offered “homage to Prime Minister Sharon,” recognizing the “political and physical courage” it required to “make a historical decision,” and declaring Mr. Sharon a “rare politician” for his willingness to go “against [his] camp, [his] allies, [his] ministers, to impose a just idea.”
Don’t get the impression that Mr. Sarkozy was on the pro-Israel side of George W. Bush. He reminded his audience that the disengagement could not end with Gaza. “It will also be necessary to find a solution for the West Bank,” he said. “The situation will not be able to remain what it is today.” Nor did he stray too far a field, “affirm[ing] that France is not anti-Semitic even if, alas, there is anti-Semitism in France” and insisting, incredibly, that “France never compromised and will never compromise with the safety of Israel.”
But he surrounded those statements with his own credibility on the matter of anti-Semitism in France, and with strong words about the “daily cruel test of blind and barbarian terrorism” Israelis have faced, without much sympathy from French officialdom or, for that matter, public opinion. All terrorism is “contemptible,” he said, rattling off a litany of attacks he said filled him with “horror…: Dolphinarium, Netanya, the Sbarro pizzeria, two children of Sderot…”And he expressed “admiration for the courage and the force of character of the Israeli citizens, who face this permanent danger and continue to build a great state, a living democracy, and a vigorous economy.”
Coming from an American politician, many of these statements would seem routine, even banal. But that is the point. Coming from a serious contender for the Elysee Palace, Mr. Sarkozy’s remarks constitute a welcome change in French political rhetoric, a change that could have an impact throughout the coming presidential campaign. It is a declaration of independence from the exclusive obsession with the Arab side of the story that has dominated the French discussion of Israel since Charles de Gaulle.
Mr. Twersky is a contributing editor of The New York Sun.