Zalman Shoval was a protégé of Israel’s first prime minister David Ben Gurion. In 1965, he joined Ben Gurion’s new political party that split off from the Labor Party. When that party merged into a new center-right entity called Likud in 1973, Shoval became one of its founders. After serving as a Likud member of Knesset, Shoval served twice as Israel’s ambassador to the US, under Prime Ministers Shamir and Netanyahu. He has remained active in US-Israel affairs and the JST’s Ksenia Svetlova met the 95-year old Shoval at his home in Tel Aviv.
Ksenia Svetlova: Ambassador Shoval, it’s such a pleasure to meet you for this conversation at a very critical time. I would like to start with asking, do you remember a time like this [in the US-Israel relationship], a time of disagreements and perhaps arm wrestling between leaders over issues of Israeli security and foreign policy, and perhaps some personal memories that you can tell us about?
Zalman Shoval: Frankly, I don’t think that there has been much of a basic shift. I think actually this is a continuation of a long-standing situation. There was in the past a different emphasis perhaps on different points.
I’ll remind you that many years ago when Rabin was Prime Minister for the first time [1974-1977], there was a debate between us and the United States on some serious issue, a security issue. A cabinet minister, Gadi Yaacobi at the time, said to Sam Lewis, the American ambassador, “Look, we are not a vassal state and this name ‘vassal state’ keeps cropping up all the time.”
Look, we’re not a vassal state. Actually, Israel is running its own affairs and there’s a lot of criticism among the MAGA people in America that President Trump is giving in too much to Israel, and so forth. At one time [in the early days of the State of Israel] many said, “We can all trust Great Britain,” and Ben Gurion said “No, the future is America.” All our politics and policies were shifted towards America, also because of the Jewish community there.
I don’t know if this is an interesting fact, but during the Korean War, Ben Gurion even tried to interest Americans in accepting Israeli military units to fight [in the US-led international coalition], but the Americans rejected. Unfortunately, this didn’t happen. But this just shows how Ben Gurion and all those who followed him were determined to keep a close relationship with America, and today it is closer to any relationship that America has with any other country or any other people.
Now when relations are very close it also means that there can be crises and disagreements like in a family. The facts of this relationship are not going to change because on most of the major issues, whether it’s the Territories [the West Bank and Gaza], whether it’s Palestinian statehood, whether it’s the very essence of Israel as a Zionist, Jewish, democratic state, in spite of what you read in the newspapers today, the differences between the center-left and the center-right in Israel are not very great.
So if one expects the progressive Democrats or the extreme Republicans to have a change of policy towards Israel, if we have a change of government, I think that’s an illusion.
Basically, I think the relationship will continue because there are interests involved on both sides, not only Israel’s side. On Israel’s side [the interests are] more perhaps, but there are also interests on the American side. Perhaps it will not be the same warmth of relationship. A lot will depend on the United States. There’s no doubt about that, also on Israel itself.
And I believe in the policy which started with the Abraham Accords, which basically was the vision of Netanyahu, but which couldn’t have been completed without the help of the Trump administration. I think our Arab partners, most of them, think that this has been a benefit to them, and it has been a benefit to them. We saw this also in the recent war.
If we can continue, not shutting off the Palestinian issue problem, but finding a formula of gradual, not integration, but gradual development of [Palestinian] self-governance, this will have a beneficial effect because Saudi Arabia has great plans for itself. They need Israel, too.
Ksenia Svetlova: Thank you very much, Ambassador. It was very fascinating and interesting to listen to you, and I hope that your optimism will continue.
Zalman Shoval: We have always been optimistic. Thank you.
