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Le Figaro

Algeria, Israel: 'Our Internal Weaknesses Poison Our Foreign Policy'

Réservé aux abonnés Both countries share a difficult history with France, a history of repentance, explains Xavier Driencourt. According to the former French ambassador to Algiers, our relations with these two countries reveal the ambiguities of a French diplomacy paralyzed by its internal fragilities. There are two countries toward which our foreign policy seems increasingly dictated by domestic political considerations — at the risk of diplomatic inconsistency or impotence: Algeria and Israel. At first glance, these two countries look different, but they share a heavy history with France, a relationship shaped by memory and a form of repentance — colonization on the one hand, participation in the Holocaust on the other — as well as by a strong presence in our society through very active binational communities. These countries expose, each in their own way, the ambiguities of an increasingly self-censored French diplomacy, which seems paralyzed by its own internal fragilities. For a French president or foreign minister, speaking about Algeria is never about 'pure' foreign policy. It always means taking into account one's domestic impact, the reactions one's remarks will provoke in Algiers... but also in France — particularly, but not only — in the French suburbs, among Franco-Algerians…