Summary
The foreign-policy formula publicly declared by Israel’s first governments — friendship with both the United States and the Soviet Union, no bloc participation, no foreign bases — which Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace argues was “double bookkeeping” over a private pro-American orientation dating from 1947, abandoned in practice with the Tripartite Declaration (1950) in May 1950 and formally in the UN Korea debate of January 1951 (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.109-119).
Details
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The first government’s basic principles promised “faithfulness to the principles set out in the UN Charter and friendship with all peace-loving states and especially with the United States and the Soviet Union”; to Knesset questions on US-sponsored military alliances the government replied “We are conducting a policy of non-alignment” (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.112).
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Sharett’s definition (Kol Ha’am, 15/3/49): “Non-participation in a bloc aimed against any one of the member-states of the UN; not to permit any state to establish bases in the territory of the State of Israel” (PDF p.113).
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Against the public formula, the book sets a 1947 Jewish Agency memorandum offering integration into a US “regional framework”, a confidential assurance to the US envoy that Israel “is oriented toward the West politically and culturally”, a secret State Council declaration that “Israel sees itself as a Western nation and its fate is tied to the West”, and Pinchas Lavon’s 1954 open statement of an unbreakable tie with the Western democracies (PDF p.110-113).
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The book gives two reasons for the concealment: Israel’s decisive early reliance on Eastern-bloc political and military support, and a public opinion still friendly to the Soviet Union and distrustful of the West (PDF p.112).
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The book attributes the abandonment not to any Soviet change — the USSR remained consistent in support of the partition plan — but to the Abdullah collusion’s need for Western endorsement of the territorial status quo, which “enlisted it (not against its will!) in the Cold War against the Soviet Union” (PDF p.116-118).
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The formal end, continued in part 3: Haaretz (25/2/51) records two decisions that put an end to non-alignment — Israel’s invitation to the “Free World” supply organization and General Sir Brian Robertson’s visit — beginning the “independent” policy under which Israel would consider its steps only in relation to the West without considering the Eastern factor; the book adds the economic factor as the second shatterer of the myth, through the 1949 loan’s Section 12 and John Hagerty’s control of American money (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.120-123).
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Gelblum’s verdict (2/2/51): it was absurd to assume Israel could diverge from the American line while receiving American contributions, bond sales and grants; the leaders’ continued talk of “our independent and non-aligned action” was self-delusion (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.121).
Related pages
Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, Tripartite Declaration (1950), Czechoslovak arms deal, Fred Harris