Algeria and Morocco have not maintained diplomatic relations since last August. The decision to break up was taken by Algiers following a series of hostile acts and provocations from Rabat.
More than three months later, the tension between the two countries is at its height because of the assassination of three Algerians by the Moroccan army on the border between Western Sahara and Mauritania, on November 1, and the signing of a protocol for military cooperation with Israel on the occasion of the visit of the Israeli Minister of Defense to Morocco at the end of November.
At the same time, the verbal slippages of certain Moroccan officials continue and some do not hesitate to evoke the “war” against Algeria. This is the case of the former head of government (2011-2017) Abdelilah Benkirane.
Speaking in a video of the party he chairs, the Justice and Development Party (PJD), yesterday Saturday, December 4, Benkirane warned Algeria against “the escalation”, indicating that “Morocco is not easy and his revenge is not easy”.
“You have spent 45 years of oil attacking Morocco. This is an injustice, I suggest you go back to the wisdom and God,” he says in comments reported by the 360. ma.
Benkirane’s intervention fits in with King Mohamed VI’s double game in his relationship with Algeria and which consists of playing the victim while multiplying provocative acts.
It comes after Moroccan soldiers told i24news their readiness to fight against Algeria, during the visit of Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz to Morocco.
The leader of the Islamist party then bluntly evokes the possibility of a war between the two countries, warning the Algerians that they will not win it.
Borders with Algeria and agreement with Israel
“If there is war, we are with our country and our King and you are not going to win the war”, added the one who returned to the head of the PJD after his crushing defeat in the legislative elections last September. Another accusation against the Algerian leaders, that of insisting on keeping the borders closed because, according to him, “Algerians love Morocco”.
Among the grievances held in Morocco and in the Arab world to the PJD, it is to have accepted normalization with Israel while he was in charge of the government. The standardization agreements were signed in December 2020 by the then head of government, Saad Eddine El Othmani.
In this sense, Abdelilah Benkirane recognized that relations between Morocco and Israel are old, they do not date from today.
“We are not going to condemn our country. We are at the sides of our King and our country, period”, he ruled, while trying to make the “brothers of the Mashreq” believe that Morocco “will never let go of the Palestinian cause”.
Recalling that King Hassan II created a tax on tobacco and cinema for the benefit of the Palestinian cause, Benkirane indicated that this is “a doctrinal cause” because, he still maintains, “the Moroccans and the Palestinians have always been equals and brothers, united in happiness and misfortune” and that “King Mohammed VI has always supported the Palestinian cause”.
A speech that does not pass after the signing of a military pact with Israel, but that the Islamist leader does not hesitate to hold on the eve of the Palestinian president’s visit to Algeria. A coincidence?
