Summary
Prime minister of France during the Suez war, who in Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace is Anthony Eden’s partner in the tripartite attack on Egypt: Shmuel Mikunis charges that David Ben-Gurion, Begin and Bernstein advanced “the adventurous plans of Anthony Eden and Guy Mollet to take control over the Suez Canal”, and a speech Mollet gave to Socialist Party activists at Marquise at the beginning of 1960, recorded without his knowledge and published in Paris Presse, admitted he had met Ben-Gurion in France on the eve of the war (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.310, p.323).
Details
- A State Department leak published in The New York Times (19/11/56) accused the attack on Egypt of having been planned for weeks as a joint operation, the Israeli offensive known long in advance to Eden and to Mollet, and the decision to use it as motivation for their action taken jointly at the two prime ministers’ Paris meeting of 16 October 1956 (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.322).
- Mollet’s Marquise speech: he admitted that on the eve of the war he met in France “in a place and a time that the journalists changed a great deal” with Ben-Gurion, who was accompanied by two of his ministers; excerpts were quoted in Yedioth Aharonoth (9 March 1960) (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.323).
- The book argues that Eden and Mollet needed a pretext to take the Suez Canal, and that need created the “opportune moment” for Operation Sinai; Ben-Gurion, Eden and Mollet were alike confident that, with the USSR preoccupied with Hungary and the USA with its elections, France and Britain could seize and hold the Canal (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.326, p.336).
Related pages
Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, Anthony Eden, France, Operation Sinai, Randolph Churchill