French president Jacques Chirac's enthusiasm for Middle East peacekeeping comes against a complex backdrop, writes Tony Kinsella
The French army, casting around for a scapegoat to explain its 1871 defeats and excesses, settled on Captain Alfred Dreyfus. Convicted of espionage and banished to Devil's Island on trumped-up anti-Semitic grounds, Dreyfus was finally cleared in 1906.
Theodor Herzl's coverage of the Dreyfus affair convinced him that the safety of the Jewish people could only be guaranteed by the creation of a Jewish state. He published his Judentsaat in 1896, the work which would form the basis for Zionism.
The creation of Israel by the UN General Assembly in 1948 was the realisation of Herzl's Zionist dream.
Israel had to fight for her survival in 1948. Wars with her Arab neighbours in 1956, 1967 and 1973, and her invasions of Lebanon in 1982 and 2006, helped reinforce the Zionist principle of reliance on her own military strength.
If Israel's heavy dependence on the US poses questions as to her real degree of Zionist self-reliance, the basic principle remains valid.
It is a principle which has largely worked for Israel in her conflicts with other states. In the more complex theatre of conflict with non-state actors, it has proved to be at best less effective, and at worst counter-productive.
Since 1967 Israel has been an occupying power, ruling over and responsible for almost two million Palestinians, posing Jerusalem with an existentialist dilemma. Were Israel to annex the occupied territories she would quickly become a state with an Arab majority. Israel can be either a democracy, or an occupying power, but in the long term she cannot be both.
While a global consensus has emerged around the principle of two states, Israel and Palestine, a major initial problem is that the two peoples cannot, by themselves, get from where they are to where they would like to be.
The Israelis do not trust Palestinian bodies and the Palestinians reject Israeli control. One method of moving forward would be for both sides to agree a transitory role for a mutually acceptable third party. Yet this leap of Israel accepting to place some of her security in the hands of others runs contrary to Zionist purity.
The recent ill-conceived and poorly-prepared Israeli attack on Lebanon is a perfect illustration of this dilemma.
More encouragingly the ensuing diplomatic efforts suggest what could be the beginnings of a solution, and one that builds on one of the rare positive recent experiences of the region.
Lebanon and Israel both needed an exit from a military impasse. The former needed a window of opportunity to explore internal political solutions involving Hizbullah as a political actor while the latter also needed a face-saving political breathing space.
Two interwoven factors were capable of supplying that opportunity, a tacit Hizbullah acceptance not to fire on Israel and an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon. The only method of achieving this was the insertion of an international force to bolster the deployment of the Lebanese army.
Such a force had to be based on a European core and given current deployments and political realities that meant it had to have a French foundation. Paris, based on its Bosnian and Lebanese experiences, was determined to avoid a situation where French troops could become sitting targets for either belligerent or for their extremists.
Sources suggest that the French government's first preference would have been for a robust force under a UN mandate, but not under UN control. The compromise hammered out has been for a much enhanced Unifil, most likely under Franco-Italian operational command.
France will supply some 2,000 troops to Unifil with another 2,000 naval and air force personnel forming a French Task Force operating out of Cyprus. Italy and Spain will probably furnish up to 4,000 troops.
Paris and Rome both sought an indication from Jerusalem that Israel would not undertake a "second round" in Lebanon should they deploy forces. Italian foreign minister Massimo d'Alema made the demand public on August 22nd.
Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni visited both France and Italy to offer acceptable undertakings. Israel has agreed, at least temporarily, that European forces can provide her with acceptable security on her northern frontier.
This is a significant development, following on the heels of the successful transfer of control of the Gaza-Egypt border post at Rafah from Israeli to Palestinian forces under EU supervision.
If Middle Eastern security can be enhanced through the presence of acceptable third party forces, we may just be witnessing the beginnings of pragmatic and concrete approach to peace in the region.
It would be indeed fitting if France, the birthplace of Zionism, could act as midwife to the liberation of Israel's security from the trap of Zionist purity 100 years later.
Tony Kinsella is a writer and commentator based in France