Re: I think there is a symbiotic relationship between the Palestinians and the Israelis.
Well, I guess any master-slave relationship can purport to be "symbiotic" --just like any predator-prey "relationship"...
Re: Even though Algeria was incorporated into 'Metropolitan' France, the two were separated by a major sea. Israel and Palestine are continguous.
You bring up the wrong parallel: Israel is to the US what Algeria was to France. And likewise, the US is separated from Israel by an ocean. The major difference between the US/Israel and France/Algeria couples is that the former is driven and sustained by religious fanaticism whereas the latter relied on (French) history and jingoism.
French Pieds Noirs never rested their case on the Bible! Only a small, irrelevant fringe of the French Catholic Right attempted to turn the Algerian war into a French crusade of sorts but French opinion never picked it up.
Re: France felt it was part of its manifest destiny to occupy Algeria in order to siphon off Algeria's resources...
That was true in the early stages of France's Algerian conquest --back in the 1830s! Algeria's independence war, however, broke out in 1954, 124 years later. At that time, over one million Pieds Noirs couldn't contemplate --never contemplated-- the prospect of leaving Algeria or relinquishing their privileges in ruling her... Although they held a French passport, most Pieds Noirs considered Algérie Française as their real fatherland. Some families like the Maltese Sultana's had been living in Algiers since the 1800s....
Re: ...I also think the differences are considerable and prevent the two relationships from becoming analogous.
Indeed. Another major difference between the two is geopolitical: French Algeria remained a French jurisdiction until its independence in 1962. Which meant that, no matter the tensions and conflicts between Paris and the Pied-Noir leadership in Algiers, the latter was formally, diplomatically and militarily under the former's orders. Hence the so-called Generals' putsch in 1960 by Generals R. Salan, Zeller, Jouhaud and Challe. Contrariwise, Israel enjoys a full-fledged sovereignty --diplomatically, at least. Otherwise, Israel, just like French Algeria, couldn't keep the ball rolling without huge financial help from her American patron...
Yet another difference is that all the military stationed in French Algeria was non-nuclear and under metropolitan control, from the Légion Etrangère's HQ in Sidi bel Abes to the garrisons (RIMa's, Parachutistes,...) of Algiers, Constantine,... unlike the IDF under Israeli command. Ditto for intelligence: it was SDECE and Renseignements Généraux that handled intelligence to fight the FLN.
Yet all those differences don't weight against the similarities. For instance, just like AIPAC and other pro-Israel lobbies pressure US lawmakers in Congress, Algeria's Pieds Noirs too had their men in France's Assemblée Nationale and in all of the political parties... And just like the US is encircling Iran and accusing it of support to Hezbollah and Palestinian "terrorists", France invaded Egypt in 1956 (Suez crisis) as she accused Nasser of helping FLN "terrorists"....
Gus |
