Five countries, including Morocco, will normalize relations with Israel in the near future, Eli Cohen, Israel’s intelligence minister on Israeli television Channel 20, said on Tuesday. The official pledged that announcements will rain after the US presidential election on November 3.
Israeli Intelligence Minister Eli Cohen said in an interview with Channel 20 television on Tuesday that his country is stepping up contacts with states to normalize their relations. He thus assured that announcements will take place just after the results of the 2020 American presidential election, scheduled for Tuesday, November 3, reports i24news.
Eli Cohen thus revealed that Tel Aviv is trying to normalize its relations with “five Arab countries: Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, Niger and Morocco”. The Israeli intelligence minister recalled having unveiled, the day after the signing of the normalization agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, that “there would be other agreements to come with other Gulf countries and Africa ”. “This was the case with Bahrain and Sudan who joined this historic path,” he added.
Eli Cohen noted that what the region is currently witnessing “is part of major historical transformations and from the point of view of an Israeli economic and military power.” And to quote “the American determination to continue this march, which results in the formation of a strong front which includes Egypt, Sudan, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, against the axis of evil led by Iran and Erdogan (the Turkish president, editor’s note) ”.
This statement follows another, held by a representative of Moroccan Judaism. On Monday, Simon Haim Skiran, secretary-general of the French Federation of Moroccan Judaism reported, on his Facebook page, that a meeting would have taken place recently in New York between “American, Israeli and Moroccan diplomats to lay the foundations for a normalization of relations between Israel and Morocco ”. Information to be taken, however, with a grain of salt, given that Simon Haim Skiran does not cite sources to support his remarks.
Ads that worry pro-Palestine activists in Morocco
On the Moroccan side, although officials prefer not to react to this information, pro-Palestinian activists continue to watch for the announcements. On Friday, September 18, dozens of people observed a sit-in outside the seat of Parliament in Rabat to condemn any normalization with Israel. At the call of a collective bringing together about thirty associations, unions and left-wing political parties, the protest action was an opportunity for the organizers to denounce the establishment of diplomatic relations between the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain with the Hebrew state and to hammer home that “Palestine is a national cause for Moroccans”.
This protest comes as Israeli and American media, such as the CNN channel, had notably cited Morocco, Oman and Sudan as the next signatories of peace agreements with Israel, after the announcement concerning the Emirates and Bahrain, the last month.
anti-normalization activists with Israel are sure to react as Sudan also finalized its agreement to normalize relations with the Jewish state over the past week for an announcement made this week.
Israel does not hide its intention to resume diplomatic relations with the kingdom. In fact, last February, Israeli and American media attributed to the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, a lobbying operation to convince the United States to recognize Moroccan sovereignty over the Sahara, in exchange for the restoration of official diplomatic relations between Tel Aviv and Rabat.
The Israeli intelligence minister’s statement remains the first by an Israeli official with his face uncovered, putting Morocco on the list of the next states to forge diplomatic ties with the Jewish state.
