The Fischer-Chauvel Agreement (or Fischer-Chauvel Agreements) is an agreement made in 1948 and 1949 between the French and Israeli governments involving the status of a number of French institutions in the newly-founded State of Israel and claimed by France as the French national domain in the Holy Land. The agreement was signed for Israel by Maurice Fischer (1903–1965), an Israeli diplomat in France at the time.
Israel holds the view that the Israeli Declaration of Independence created a new international personality that is not a successor state of the Ottoman Empire or the British Mandate and so it is bound only by those former international obligations affecting the territory as Israel might accept.[1] Under Israeli law, the Knesset must ratify international agreements before they become part of domestic law, which it has never done in the case of the Fischer-Chauvel Agreement.[2][3] Nevertheless, Israel has maintained the previous tax exemptions and privileges of the sites claimed as domaine national.[2]
The French claims are based on claimed acquisitions predating the formation of the State of Israel, specifically in the Accords of Mytilene of November 1901, the Agreement of Constantinople of 18 December 1913,[4] and the Fischer-Chauvel Agreement of 6 September 1948 to 31 January 1949.[2]