Last month the North African kingdom of Morocco became the fourth Arab country to normalize ties with Israel, following the Abraham Accords with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan.
The move is the culmination of a successful year of upgrading Israel’s relations with Arab and Muslim countries, beginning with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visiting Chad and meeting Sudan’s leader in Uganda, followed by the Abraham Accords, as well as the warming relations and cooperation with Saudi Arabia.
Early in 2020, Israel proposed to the White House that normalization of relations with Morocco would come in conjunction with American recognition of Western Sahara as part of the kingdom.
Morocco has always had fewer hostile views of Israel than other Arab states, something emphasized by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu following the Dec. 10 agreement.
“Everyone knows the warm ties of the kings of Morocco and the Moroccan people to the Jewish community there,” he said. “Hundreds of thousands of Jews moved to Israel from Morocco and they form a living bridge between the people of Morocco and Israel. This solid base is the foundation on which we build this peace.”
Morocco already had semi-normal relations with Israel. The late King Hassan II tried to be a behind-the-scenes catalyst in the Arab-Israeli peace process. In July 1986, he hosted Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres in an effort to stimulate progress.
Two months later, Hassan met with a delegation of Jews of Moroccan origin. In 1993, after signing the Oslo Accords with the PLO, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin paid a formal visit to Morocco.
This latest deal was brokered by Donald Trump. Following the announcement, Trump spoke with King Mohammed VI of Morocco, who agreed “to expand economic and cultural cooperation to advance regional stability.”
The king, Morocco’s “Commander of the Faithful,” has pushed for a tolerant Islam that ensures freedom of worship for Jews and foreign Christians. One of his predecessors, Mohammed V, resisted the anti-Semitic laws promulgated during the Second World War, when the country was a French protectorate and, for a time, under the rule of the fascist collaborationist Vichy regime.
Fouad Chafiqi, director of the Education Ministry’s academic programs department, announced that Jewish history and culture in Morocco will soon be part of the school curriculum. The decision “has the impact of a tsunami,” remarked Serge Berdugo, secretary-general of the Council of Jewish Communities of Morocco.
Education Minister Said Amzazi and the heads of two Moroccan associations also signed a partnership agreement “for the promotion of values of tolerance, diversity and coexistence in schools and universities.” At the end of December, a Moroccan delegation arrived in Israel to prepare to open a liaison office.
The presence of Jews in Morocco stretches back more than 2,000 years. Before the founding of Israel in 1948, estimates put their number as high as about 275,000, some 10 per cent of the population. It was the largest Jewish community in the Muslim world. Jewish Moroccans have held cabinet-level positions and advisory roles to multiple monarchs.
Today, after vast waves of departures over the years, only about 2,000 Jews remain in Casablanca and about 500 elsewhere in Morocco.
Most cities have a mellah, an old Jewish quarter, along with Jewish cemeteries and synagogues. The last Moroccan Jewish day school, Neve Shalom, is in Casablanca, the economic and business centre of the kingdom.
For years thousands of Jews of Moroccan origin, including from Israel, have been visiting the land of their ancestors, to celebrate religious holidays or make pilgrimages.
The Museum of Moroccan Judaism in suburban Casablanca, was opened in 1997., Last January, King Mohammed VI inaugurated the House of Memory, which celebrates the coexistence of Jews and Muslims in the port city of Essaouira.
The losers in this deal were the Sahrawi people of Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony. Morocco annexed it in 1975, but it is claimed by the Sahrawi Democratic Arab Republic. It hosts the Polisario Front, the separatist group fighting for independence, which controls about one-fifth of the desert territory. Washington is opening a consulate in the Western Saharan city of Dakhla as well as providing $4 billion in economic and military aid to Morocco.
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