According to a Nov. 28 Reuters dispatch, De Gaulle during the news conference also said that “during the Suez affair of 1956 the Israelis emerged as a war-like state determined to expand. He condemned Israel as the aggressor in her war with the Arabs last June.”
The day after De Gaulle’s conference, the Israeli government in a brief communiqué called De Gaulle’s words a “historical distortion” and a “grave affront to the Jewish people and the State of Israel.” The Egyptian government calls De Gaulle's stance "heartlifting, encouraging, courageous."
De Gaulle’s characterization of what Israel was unleashing in the Occupied Territories would be vindicated by history, however, and his policy recommendations were in line with United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, which would form the basis of peace negotiations for subsequent decades.
The news conference touched on a matters as varied as American power in European business relations, Britain’s role in the Common Market (the forerunner of the European Union), the status of the British currency and the balancing of American power in the world. The following are De Gaulle’s remarks regarding the Arab-Israeli situation:
DE GAULLE: In order to avoid hostilities, since May 24 France had been proposing to the three other great powers that she, jointly with the others, prohibit each of the two sides [Arabs and Israelis] from starting fighting.
We know that the voice of France went unheard, as Israel attacked and in six days of fighting, captured the objectives it had set itself.
Now, on the territories it has captured, it is organizing an occupation that cannot be carried out without oppression, repression, expulsions and resistance, which Israel, in its turn, calls terrorism.
It is true that at the moment the two belligerents are, in a more or less precarious and irregular way, observing the cease-fire proscribed by the United Nations, but it is quite obvious that the conflict is only suspended, and that there can be no solution except through international channels.
But unless the United Nations tears up it6s charter, a settlement along these channels must take place on the basis of the excavation of territories seized by force, the end of all belligerence, and the recognition of each of the states involved by all the other states.
After this, it would probably be possible, with decisions by the United Nations and the presence and guarantee of their forces, to lay down exactly the frontiers, conditions for life and security of both sides, the fate of the refugees and minorities, and the details of free navigation for all in the Gulf of Aqaba and the Suez Canal.
To this particular settlement, France believes there should be added an international statute for Jerusalem.
