Interview With Abba Eban, II March 1976

Introduction

ABBA EBAN WAS OFTEN REFERRED to as the voice of Israel. He was one of Israel's most brilliant, eloquent, and skillful representatives abroad in the struggle for independence and in the first 25 years of statehood. He was less effective in the rough and tumble of Israeli domestic politics because he lacked the common touch and, more importantly, because he lacked a power base of his own. Nevertheless, he played a major role in the formulation and conduct of Israel's foreign policy during a crucial period in the country's history.

Born in South Africa, on 2 February 1915, Eban grew up in London and gained a degree in Oriental languages from Cambridge University. During the Second World War he served with British military intelligence in Cairo and Jerusalem and reached the rank of major. After the war he joined the political department of the Jewish Agency. In 1949 he became head of the Israeli delegation to the United Nations. The following year he was appointed ambassador to the United States and he continued to serve in both posts until 1959.

On his return to Israel, Eban was elected to the Knesset on the Mapai list and kept his seat until 1988. He joined the government in 1960 as minister without portfolio and later became minister of education and culture. Three years later he was promoted to the post of deputy by Prime Minister Levi Eshkol. In 1966 Eban became foreign minister and he retained this post after Golda Meir succeeded Levi Eshkol in 1969. But when Itzhak Rabin became prime minister in 1974, Eban's ministerial career came to an abrupt end. He remained active in public life as the chairman of Knesset committee on foreign affairs and defense, and as a writer and lecturer. He died in Herzliya on 17 November 2002, aged 87. [Begin Page 155]

My interview with Abba Eban took place in the Dorchester Hotel in London on 11 March 1976. I was a young lecturer in Politics at the University of Reading at the time and this was my first interview, so I was inexperienced and quite nervous. The interview was intended for a book I had started researching on Israeli foreign policy, 1967-1973, from the Six-Day War to the October War. This book was not completed and I only made very slight use of this interview in my other writings. The death of Abba Eban prompted me to publish the text of the interview in its entirety for the light it sheds on an eventful period in Israel's foreign policy.

Interview

Q. If we define Ben-Gurionism as a search for reconciliation through the application of force, and Sharettism as a search for reconciliation through the quest for moderate solutions, would you see yourself consciously as a follower of the Sharett line and an opponent of the Ben-Gurionist line?

A. No, well first of all, I don't accept the definitions, because Sharett was a very great believer in the necessity for strength as the foundation of our diplomacy. It was he who laid emphasis on the establishment of the Brigade Group and on the fortified army. On the other hand, Ben-Gurion's rhetoric of contempt for world opinion did not reflect his real view. He had an almost reverent belief in the necessity for Israel to have a strong position in the eyes of the world, and especially in the United States. In other words, I believe that the difference in their political orientations was trivial to the point of being microscopic; the differences between them were subsidiary, individual, and temperamental, but it may surprise you when I say that I don't think that any critical scholarship could find any evidence of different philosophies of international relations between them.

And I myself am somewhat intermediate between them. I very much followed Sharett's international line, but I found him excessive in his...