During his reign, Hassan II maintained an ambiguity by not cutting ties with the Hebrew state, while defending the Palestinian cause.
In Morocco, elementary school children will soon have to learn all about Moroccan Jewish culture and history. The decision was taken ahead of Thursday’s announcement of normalization of relations between Morocco and Israel. But it does provide a glimpse of the historical dynamics that led King Mohammad VI to take this turn, making Morocco the fourth Arab country to formalize its relations with the Hebrew state this year after the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan.
Rabat thus breaks with six decades of a hidden and almost uninterrupted multi-faceted connection. Since his accession to the throne in 1961, Hassan II has constantly played the balancing act between his Arab acolytes and the Israelis, posing as an essential interlocutor in the peace process in the Middle East. Unlike most other Arab countries, the King of Morocco has never opposed negotiations with the Israeli leadership. Deeply convinced that the only way out was to reach a political solution, the Shereefian sovereign deployed his forces as a mediator, without ever daring to take the step of recognition. An ambivalence in which the two countries have been able to find their account for decades, in terms of military and commercial cooperation. At the Arab League summit on January 13, 1964, Hassan II called on the Arab countries to adopt a realistic attitude towards the conflict between Israel and Palestine, which will allow him to be the privileged interlocutor of the West but also to strengthen Morocco’s position within the League. “Given the historical and cultural nature of the attachment of Israelis of Moroccan origin to Morocco, the ties between the two countries were deeper than the Israeli-Emirati relations”, recalls Mohammad Daadaoui, professor of political science at the University. of Oklahoma City. The starting point of these relations rests in part on the presence of a large number of Moroccan Jews before the creation of Israel in 1948. More than 700,000 Israelis are from the kingdom, and even if only a few remain. 2,000 Jews in Morocco, they made it possible to constitute a diplomatic “bridge” between the Israelis and the Arabs. In 1965, Hassan II did not hesitate to collaborate with the Mossad, allowing him to spy on the meetings in Casablanca between Arab leaders and commanders in preparation for an attack on Israel. In exchange, he obtains the liquidation of the opponent Mehdi Ben Barka. The information obtained will be crucial in Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War in 1967. This double game will not prevent Hassan II from hammering out the right of return of the Palestinians, but also from sending his troops in 1967 and during the 1973 war to fight alongside Egypt and Syria. After the normalization of relations between Egypt and the Jewish state in 1979, Morocco did not follow suit, however. Refusing the unspoken rule of isolating Israel, the Moroccan king increased his meetings with officials and even hosted congresses of Jewish communities in Morocco, as in May 1984, in the presence of some sixty Israeli personalities. will never open an embassy in Israel, it will give in for a liaison office in 1994 before it closed in 2000 during the second intifada. “The ties have sometimes been diplomatic, but more often in trade, agriculture, tourism and technology more recently,” said Abderrahim Chalfaouat, researcher specializing in Moroccan-American relations at Hassan II University in Casablanca.
“Criminalize” normalization with Israel
Mohammad VI ascended to the throne in 1999 and followed in his father’s footsteps on this issue, despite public mistrust. The Maghreb populations are historically very attached to the Palestinian cause and the Justice and Development Party (PJD), of Islamist movement, strongly disapproves of these relations. During the Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip in 2014 that killed more than 2,200 people, five political parties, for example, called for a bill criminalizing “normalization with Israel.” A request that will be reiterated when US President Donald Trump announced in December 2017 to move the US embassy to Jerusalem. When it opened in May 2018, more than 10,000 Moroccans took to the streets in protest. “The severance of diplomatic relations did not hamper military and economic relations,” said Mohammad Daadaoui. Since the 2000s, commercial exchanges have indeed flourished, particularly in the agricultural, technological and military intelligence fields and weaponry. “Between 2014 and 2017, trade between Morocco and Israel exceeded 149 million dollars, making Morocco the fourth African partner of Israel in terms of imports and the ninth in terms of exports”, continues the expert. . Trade that the authorities have minimized or even denied for years, while the Palestinian cause is still a taboo issue in the Arab world.
Last August, the Moroccan step of Jared Kushner, son-in-law and senior adviser to Donald Trump, as part of his tour of the Middle East to establish diplomatic relations between Israel and Arab countries, had been closely scrutinized. Moroccan Prime Minister Saadeddine el-Othmani then declared that Rabat would not normalize relations with Israel, before specifying a few days later that his comments had been made in his capacity as leader of the Islamist PJD party, and not as head of government .
Unlike the Gulf countries, which find in the alliance with Israel a bulwark against the Iranian threat, the normalization of Morocco does not have the same strategic dimension – even if Rabat also maintains hostile relations with Tehran and its allies – but rests on economic, symbolic and cultural interests. And the rallying of the King of Morocco, president of the al-Quds Committee (an organization bringing together the supporters of the Palestinian cause within the Arab world), has a price: the recognition of Western Sahara, a territory disputed by Morocco and the separatists Sahrawi, and whose status is still not defined by the UN. “This is an offer that cannot be refused on the Moroccan side. The king is aware that this opportunity will not be repeated with the next president, “said Hasni Abidi, director of the Center for Studies and Research on the Arab and Mediterranean World (CERMAM) in Geneva. This dimension has been widely highlighted in the coverage of the Moroccan media and in the official speech. The American news site Axios had evoked last February discussions on a trilateral agreement which would imply an American recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara in return for which Rabat should take effective measures to normalize its relations with the Hebrew state. and support the “deal of the century” rejected by the Palestinians and the Arab League. “Morocco is going through an economic crisis and hopes to reap benefits in terms of direct investments, particularly from the United Arab Emirates, which played a decisive role in the Moroccan decision to normalize,” said Hasni Abidi. The royal palace statement says the decision will not affect the country’s commitment to a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, nor the kingdom’s position in favor of a two-state solution. “It is very unlikely that Morocco will completely abandon the Palestinian cause,” said Abderrahim Chalfaouat. The Moroccan ruler called on Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to assure him that his position would not change. “Morocco sees in this normalization a pragmatic position that will allow it to advocate more effectively in favor of a two-state solution and a just peace plan,” explains Mohammad Daadaoui for his part.
But the announcement is in fact part of a gradual abandonment of certain Arab capitals from the Arab peace initiative of 2002, which conditions the recognition of the Hebrew state on the creation of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. .
