In Morocco, hundreds of citizens and activists protested against the Israeli army’s attack on the Jabalia refugee camp (Gaza), one of the most populated areas of the Palestinian enclave. Angry, they call on Morocco to reverse the normalization of its diplomatic relations with the Jewish state and to close the Israeli liaison office in Rabat.
Hundreds of demonstrators gathered on the night of Tuesday to Wednesday, October 31, in Rabat, Tangier and other cities in the kingdom at the call of several NGOs to condemn the Israeli bombing of a residential area of the Jabalia camp, north of Gaza. According to the Gaza Interior Ministry, Israeli warplanes earlier Tuesday dropped at least six bombs on the neighborhood, each weighing around 1,000 kilograms. The strikes caused “400 victims, including dead and injured,” he said.
For the moment, Morocco has not yet officially reacted to the Jabalia massacre. “Today we are here to demand an end to the silence on this massacre. It’s a shame. And we will go down in history as accomplices if we do nothing,” Al-Arbi Findi, a member of the Moroccan Group Against Normalization, one of the NGOs that called for the protest, told The New Arab. According to his association, the normalization agreements constitute a “failed peace agreement” due to the inability of Morocco and other signatories to mediate the entry of aid and the ceasefire in Gaza after more than a month of war between Hamas and Israel.
For the demonstrators, it is time for Rabat, which reestablished its diplomatic relations with Tel Aviv in December 2020 under the aegis of the United States in exchange for American recognition of the Moroccan nature of the Sahara, to cut ties with the Hebrew state as the kingdom did so in 2000 in response to Israel’s brutality during the second Intifada. “We cannot remain silent forever. The State must know that we have a voice and that we will use it to defend good causes,” explains Omar, a Moroccan who came to demonstrate in Rabat on Tuesday.
