Morocco Won’t Normalise Relations With Israel, Here’s Why...

 For example, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal published articles about Morocco’s alleged desire to follow in the UAE’s footsteps. The Associated Press said Jared Kushner—senior advisor and son-in-law to US President Donald Trump—was due to visit Morocco during the last week of August, a move that did not materialise. Morocco was not among the countries that Kushner and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited to push other regional actors to normalise relations, nor has it given the slightest hint that it is looking to take that step. 

 The tendency to put Morocco at the top lists of countries willing to normalise ties with Israel is not new. In February 2020,American and Israel media claimed confidently that Rabat had given the green light to normalising its diplomatic relations with Israel in exchange for the Trump administration’s recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara,a 45-year-long territorial dispute that has pitted Morocco against the Algeria-backed Polisario Front, a breakaway movement that seeks to establish an independent state in the territory. 

 These are not the first instances of Israeli and American media spreading rumours of this nature. In the run-up to the Israeli parliamentary elections in April 2019, Israeli media claimed that Morocco was coordinating with the United States to welcome a visit from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

 The rumour spread like wildfire in Moroccan and Israeli media, to the point where many Moroccans began to believe King Mohammed VI was indeed preparing to receive the Israeli prime minister. Even after the fact, many viewed the absence of any denial from the Moroccan government as evidence suggesting a visit would eventually take place. 

 The normalisation rumours have one thing in common: they suggest that Morocco seeks to use a potential rapprochement with Israel to ingratiate itself with the Trump administration and persuade the United States to favour its position on Western Sahara. 

 Morocco has no interest in normalising its ties with Israel at the expense of the Palestinians. It also has no interest in using normalisation in exchange for supposed American support for its position on Western Sahara. The primary beneficiary of an unlikely normalisation of relations between Morocco and Israel would be Netanyahu. Such diplomacy would help restore his image in the eyes of Israeli public opinion. It would give him the aura of a leader who succeeded in ending Israel’s regional and international isolation by normalising its relations with Arab countries. 

 Morocco also does not need to normalise ties with Israel to establish its credentials as a bastion of coexistence between different religions. Among all Arab nations, Morocco is known as a bridge between different cultures and for entertaining strong ties with its Jewish diaspora around the world, including more than a million Israelis of Moroccan origin, the Sephardic Jews. More still, the 2011 Moroccan constitution formally recognised the legacy of Judaism in Morocco. 

 Maintaining an outreach policy with its Jewish population, and incorporating them in its political discourse, is part of an entrenched policy to promote interfaith dialogue and bridge the gap of inter-cultural misunderstanding. This embrace of Morocco’s Jewish population should not be conflated, however, with a desire to normalise its ties with Israel as long as the Palestinian-Israeli conflict rages on without progress. 

 The weak argument that Morocco could achieve a breakthrough in Western Sahara by welcoming Netanyahu and normalising ties with Israel overlooks the conflict’s dynamics in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and how the UN works. Though the US is the penholder of the Western Sahara resolutions, it cannot alone impose its view on the other members of the council or change the course of the political process initiated in 2007. 

 Whether the US wants to advance the Moroccan position or favour Algeria and Polisario Front, it would face resistance from other UNSC members. In addition, those who brandish the mighty influence of the Jewish lobby in Washington to justify a need for Morocco to normalise Israeli ties to ingratiate itself both with this lobby, as well as with the US administration, overlook the lobby’s slow but progressive decline. This is exemplified by the defeat of incumbent members of Congress in the Democratic primaries to younger and more progressive candidates.

 As long as the Israelis refuse to respect the provisions of all Security Council resolutions on the inalienable right of Palestinians to create an independent state with East Jerusalem as their capital, normalisation with Israel will not be on Morocco’s agenda. 

 The aggressive policies Netanyahu has adopted since his return to power run counter to Morocco’s position. Rabat has repeatedly called on Israel to end its indiscriminate repression of the Palestinian people and end its policies aimed at Judaising Jerusalem and dashing the Palestinians’ hope for an independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital. 

 Supporting the Palestinian people and their struggle for an independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital is one of the tenets of Morocco’s foreign policy. Since King Mohammed VI took over from his father King Hassan II in 1999, he has never hesitated to denounce Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.

 Morocco is among the countries that rejected the Trump administration’s decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem. Following this decision in May 2018, King Mohammed VI, who is the chairman of the Al Quds Committee, sent a letter to President Trump expressing his “deep concern” about his willingness to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Morocco has chaired the Al Quds Committee since its creation in 1975 and championed its mission to defend the status of Jerusalem as a capital of the future Palestinian state and prevent the change of its legal, religious, and political status. 

 With its position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict well-known, Morocco has chosen the path of silence, brushing aside allegations by American and Israeli media indicating its readiness to normalise relations with Israel. The Moroccan government was right to dismiss these rumours and not give them any weight.

 Moroccan-Emirati divergence dispels the notion of an Arab monolith 

 On the other hand, one should keep in mind that Morocco is not the United Arab Emirates and Moroccans are not Emiratis. Unlike the United Arab Emirates, Morocco is a 12-century old nation-state and the Moroccan public is known for supporting oppressed peoples. Proof of this is the support that the people and the Moroccan state lavished on the Algerian people during their war of liberation between 1954-1962. 

 It is this reading of the Arab world as a monolith that many American observers make that leads them to believe Morocco will finally opt for a normalisation of its relations with Israel. 

 In the UAE, public opinion is never taken into account and is reduced to silence and to praising the benefits of the normalisation of its country with Israel and the genius of its crown prince. However, Morocco recognises an established and politicised public opinion against normalisation with Israel as long as the latter violates international law and the inalienable rights of the Palestinians. 

 One needs only to look at the deference with which the Emiratis reacted to the announcement of their country’s normalisation with Israel and compare it with the virulence with which Moroccan public opinion reacts to any hint or attempt at rapprochement with Israel. 

 Moroccan decision-makers’ awareness of their people’s emotional and religious attachment to Palestine is a factor those trying to draw a parallel between Morocco and certain Gulf countries would do well to consider. 

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