Abba Eban: A Biography - The Jewish Chronicle

By Asaf Siniver
Duckworth Overlook, £25

Abba Eban, born Aubrey Solomon in South Africa but educated in Britain, was the best diplomat Israel has ever produced, sacrificing a brilliant academic career at Cambridge to become Israel's first permanent representative to the UN and, simultaneously, Ambassador to the US. In 1966, he became Israel's foreign minister, a position he held until 1974.

His two greatest achievements were to negotiate, after the 1956 Suez campaign, free navigation for Israeli ships in the Canal and the Straits of Tiran; and, in 1967, to secure American diplomatic support before the Six-Day war.

He was much criticised in Israel for using diplomacy while its enemies were preparing a war of extermination. But the diplomatic pause did no military harm, and it ensured American arms deliveries, without which Israel, in Eban's words, could "win the war yet lose the victory".

Eban's successes won him little support in Israel's political establishment, with which he had little rapport. An intellectual, who had not served an apprenticeship either in a political party or in the army, he had no roots in the Mapai party, which ruled Israel during the early years of the state - under Ben-Gurion, Eshkol and Meir - nor any connections to the military leaders - Dayan, Rabin, Ezer Weizman.

Moreover, Israel's leaders have tended to disparage diplomacy. What mattered was what Israel did, not what it said. The task of the diplomat was to justify what the leaders had decided. When Ben-Gurion called Eban Israel's most gifted spokesman, it was not meant as a compliment. The leaders acted, the diplomats merely talked.

After 1974, Eban never held office again and, in 1988, he suffered the humiliation of exclusion from Labour's electoral list. "How can one not give Abba Eban his due?" Margaret Thatcher asked rhetorically in a telegram for his 75th birthday party. "Actually, there are quite a few people in Israel who think it's possible," Eban replied.

Asaf Siniver, an Israeli academic, currently lecturing in Birmingham, has written the first scholarly biography of Eban. It is a magnificent book, based on massive archival research in Israel, Britain and the United States, and on interviews with prominent Israelis, including Eban's widow.

It is beautifully written, and casts a great deal of light not only on Israeli diplomacy but on the intricacies of Israel's domestic politics.

Abba Eban highlights a debate which still divides Israel - between believers in Fortress Israel, such as Ben-Gurion, Begin, Shamir and Netanyahu; an Israel that creates facts on the ground, in defiance, if necessary, of world opinion, and those such as Chaim Weizmann, Sharett and Eban, who believed that Israel, like other small states, must take account of international opinion if it is to retain legitimacy.

This debate has been muffled since the withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, which led to the creation of a terrorist state on Israel's borders.

But when the debate resurfaces - as it will - there can be no better guide to the approach of the peace camp than this biography.