ABSTRACT
Introduction Since the Second World War, France and the US have clashed several times over the Middle East, including during the Suez Crisis of 1956 and more recently during the build-up to the second Gulf War in 2002/3.1 The 1967 Six-Day War was also the stage of an important confrontation between the two countries, but one that has not generally featured prominently in the literature. It remains subsumed within the scholarship on the Middle Eastern conflict and the larger research on Franco-American relations during the 1960s. Yet, if the Six-Day War was not as emotional a dispute as Suez or Iraq, it was equally significant because of the way it changed the roles of France and the US in the region, as well as their respective relations with Israel. Franco-Israeli relations were never quite the same after 1967, since Israel could not forgive France for abandoning it in a time of dire need, while Paris continued to see Tel Aviv as responsible for starting the war. Israel lost a close ally, but it progressively began to ally itself more closely with the US in the aftermath of the conflict.2
