Calls from students and teachers are increasing to demand an end to partnerships established by part of the Moroccan academic world with Israeli universities.
Karim (his first name has been changed at his request) can’t believe it. “We thought we would collect 300 or 400 signatures and we received nearly 1,300,” says this political science graduate from Mohammed VI Polytechnic University (UM6P). In a letter addressed to its president on May 27, 1,256 students and graduates of the institution called for “the severing of ties” between the private higher education institution, owned by the Office Chérifien des Phosphates (OCP), and “its Israeli partners,” while Morocco and Israel confirmed the resumption of their official relations in December 2020.
Their main complaint: the partnership agreements signed by UM6P with eight Israeli universities known to conduct, according to them, research programs with the army or security services of the Hebrew state – like the Institute for Internal Security Studies at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. They would therefore be “directly involved in crimes and flagrant violations of the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people and human rights in general,” denounce the signatories, who have grouped together in a “movement against academic normalization. ”
The initiative – a first at UM6P – is somewhat surprising in a private institution, one of the most renowned in Morocco, which was inaugurated in 2017 by King Mohammed VI and where his son, Crown Prince Hassan, continues his studies. The petition was particularly followed by students, specify the initiators of the movement, who estimate their number at “around a thousand” , or nearly a fifth of the university’s student body.
All the names of the petitioners are known to the administration, the protesters claim, indicating that several of their representatives were received on June 20 by a member of the UM6P management board, who was also a mediator for the OCP group. “He was embarrassed and made us understand that such a decision [to break with the eight Israeli universities] could not be taken by the UM6P ,” testified one participant. When questioned, the management of the establishment did not respond to our requests.
Cancellation of graduation ceremonies
Fear of possible actions by the movement within the UM6P would have prevailed, in recent days, over a graduation ceremony, which had been planned for a long time. The one on Friday, July 12 at the Faculty of Governance, Economic and Social Sciences (FGSES) would have been “abruptly canceled” the day before, claim the petitioners, while “the wearing of keffiyehs and the reading of messages of support for the Palestinian cause were planned”. The administration would have mentioned “technical and logistical reasons”, reports a student.
At the public university, graduation ceremonies, during which students planned to wear pro-Palestinian symbols, have also been canceled, as at the Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences (FLSH) of the Mohammed V University in Rabat. On Saturday, July 13, it was the dean of the Faculty of Sciences Ben M’Sik in Casablanca who refused to award a distinction to a student, “because she was wearing a keffiyeh”, protested the Moroccan Union of Higher Education and Scientific Research (Smesrs) in a press release.
In addition to students, the teaching staff is also mobilized in places. In Tetouan, more than 600 professors and executives from Abdelmalek Essaâdi University submitted a petition to its president on May 31 in which they demanded the severance of relations with the University of Haifa. “He assured us that it is a simple cooperation protocol [signed in September 2022] , that nothing concrete has taken place, and that he would request its cancellation at the next meeting of the university council, ” said one of the signatories, Noureddine Elmtili, a member of Smesrs.
A similar petition is reportedly being prepared at the Hassan II Agronomic and Veterinary Institute (IAV) in Rabat, one of Morocco’s largest training schools. Professor Mohamed Naji reports that it will be submitted to the administration at the start of the next academic year and adds that students are also preparing a letter of protest. The cause: an agreement signed with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, underlines the local representative of Smesrs, who denounces the situation in Gaza and the West Bank, as well as one-way cooperation between Rabat and Tel Aviv.
“Fictitious agreements”
“Morocco has had agricultural relations with Israel for over thirty years. Despite this, we remain a simple market for Israeli inputs, without any real transfer of technology and with extreme dependence on vegetable seeds and drip-type equipment,” points out the teacher, who describes the Israeli companies Netafim, Hazera, and Mehadrin as being in a quasi-monopoly situation in the kingdom.
More generally, the partnerships established by Moroccan universities with Israeli institutions or research centers are described by the protesters as “fictitious agreements” or “without transparency” , some of which are not subject to any internal communication. They were essentially established in “a political logic”, warns Karim. Most of them would not be active, according to teachers.
The academic year is over and Moroccan campuses are empty, but the mobilization is continuing, the petitioners assure. A student front against academic standardization should see the light of day, encompassing both public and private institutions, including the International University of Rabat (UIR) and the Euromed University of Fez (UEMF), which, like the UM6P, have established partnerships in Israel. “The start of the school year will be hot,” promises unionist Hamid Abchir, former deputy director of the Higher School of Technology (ESTC) in Casablanca.
These protests from the academic community come as Morocco continues to strengthen its ties with the Hebrew state in terms of defense. According to the Israeli press, Rabat will acquire from the public company Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) two Ofek 13 observation satellites, intended to replace the Mohammed VI-A and Mohammed VI-B models, designed by Airbus and Thales. Worth a billion dollars, this defense contract is the largest signed by Rabat since normalization with Tel Aviv.
