Summary
The Yedioth Aharonoth journalist whose 40th-anniversary investigation of the secret Franco-Israeli intelligence accord “Operation Fig” is reproduced as Appendix 4 of Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.519-521).
Details
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Sarna’s article opens: “Revealed for the first time: the secret agreement between Israeli and French intelligence agencies: arms for liquidations.” Its summary: “A covert accord between France and Israel on the eve of “Operation Qadesh” discussed Israeli assistance in suppressing the great revolt in Algeria, in return for arms. Israel received tanks, aircraft and ammunition from France. In return Israel was asked to provide intelligence, terrorist attacks and liquidations” (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.519-520).
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On the Israeli side sat Shimon Peres, Moshe Dayan and Yehoshafat Harkabi; ““Operation Qadesh” saved Israel from implementing most of its part of the shady deal” (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.520).
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Most of those involved were deceased by 1996; of the living, Peres was the outgoing Prime Minister, Mordechai Bar-On “continues to keep the secret of “Fig””, and Yuval Ne’eman refused to speak without authorization from the head of the Mossad and French intelligence, even about matters in Motti Golani’s Ministry-of-Defence-published There Will Be War in Summer (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.520-521).
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Dayan, five days after returning from the June 1956 Vermars talks, had warned that Israel should take care “not to become a “contractor for affairs of murder and destruction, receiving weapons as a brothel-fee.”” (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.521).
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The full Appendix 4 article (“Arms for assassinations”, Yedioth Aharonoth, 25 October 1996, p.12), completed in part 10, adds Motti Golani’s Vincennes archive discovery — the Sinai War filed under the “Algeria War” — the High Tide arms (200 MX tanks, 72 Mystères), the planned Cairo and Damascus radio bombings, Dayan and Peres’s “complete takeover of covert Israel-France relations”, and the judgement that only Nasser’s nationalization of the Canal, two days after the first French weapons arrived, saved Israel from implementing Fig (PDF p.522-530).
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The same appendix, as printed, continues with Moshe Zonder’s Maariv article (8 January 1999) on Israel’s involvement in the assassination of Mahdi Ben-Barka (PDF p.530-532).
Related pages
Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, Operation Sinai, Pierre Boursicot, Yuval Ne’eman, Algeria