Morocco Lost One of Its “Sacred” Causes with the Israel Normalization

Israel and Morocco sign an agreement at the Royal Palace in Rabat on December 22, 2020, on the first Israel-Morocco direct commercial flight, marking the latest US-brokered diplomatic normalisation deal between the Jewish state and an Arab country. Photo by Fadel Senna, AFP via Getty Images Israel and Morocco sign an agreement at the Royal Palace in Rabat on December 22, 2020, on the first Israel-Morocco direct commercial flight, marking the latest US-brokered diplomatic normalisation deal between the Jewish state and an Arab country. Photo by Fadel Senna, AFP via Getty Images

Morocco Lost One of Its “Sacred” Causes with the Israel Normalization

By : Ali Lmrabet

Morocco has always had two “sacred” causes. The first and the oldest cause is Palestine, which had been there since the declaration of the State of Israel in 1948, eight years before the Sherifian Empire regained its independence from France and Spain. The second “sacred” cause dates to 1975, when, Spain handed over the keys of Western Sahara to Morocco and Mauritania following the Green March and the Madrid tripartite agreements.

This was a poisoned gift by Spain that triggered a war between Morocco and the Saharawi independence fighters of the Polisario Front. The withdrawal of Mauritania from its zone, that is the southern half of Western Sahara, in 1979, pushed King Hassan II to occupy the zone militarily in order to prevent the Polisario from using it for their own benefit.

The Moroccans have always held the causes of Palestine and the Western Sahara close to their hearts. With the exception of a few small Berber groups, all Moroccan political parties have continuously declared themselves pro-Palestinian.

For the Western Sahara conflict, only one political formation of Marxist affiliation, Annahj Addimocrati (The Democratic Way), is neutral and calls for the holding of a referendum on self-determination as accepted by Hassan II and adopted by the eighteenth summit of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), the forerunner of the African Union (AU), in 1981.

The position of the Democratic Way is rare in a country where the concept of “national consensus” has been imposed, according to which all Moroccans are obligatorily in favor of the Moroccanness of the Sahara, and those who deviate from considering Western Sahara as Moroccan, as well as those who call for the holding of a referendum, although granted by Hassan II, are considered “traitors.”

Until President Trump announced the U.S. recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara in exchange for the restoration of diplomatic relations between Morocco and Israel, these two issues were never discussed together. Neither of these two causes was more important or more sacred than the other.

And it was unthinkable that one could ever be bartered for the other. However, this is precisely what just happened. By agreeing to re-engage with the Israeli state, the King of Morocco Mohamed VI has broken, even if he defends himself against it, this consensus on Palestine by making a major geostrategic deal.

Hence, a large portion of the Moroccan population didn’t understand the Israel move. While Moroccans are satisfied that the current U.S. administration’s recognition of their country’s sovereignty over Western Sahara, they are mortified by the king’s decision to restore diplomatic relations with Israel, which is considered a colonial state.

In a country like Morocco, which has an allegedly constitutional monarchy, the elected representatives in the House of Representatives (the lower house), despite knowing the feelings of their electorate base, didn’t express their voice, at least symbolically, revealing their dissatisfaction with the move.

However, nothing happened in the country, where public opinion does not count and where virtually all political parties have long been tamed. Only three parties have declared opinions contrary to the royal decision.

Nothing happened in the country, where public opinion does not count and where virtually all political parties have long been tamed.

The Federation of the Democratic Left (FGD), with two deputies in the House of Representatives that protested, but softly; and two other movements without parliamentary representation, who are still considered as the real opposition parties in Morocco: the Marxists of the Democratic Way, and the Islamists of the powerful association Al Adl Wal Ihsane (Justice and Spirituality). The latter used the same word to say no – “treason.”

As for the other Islamists, the Party for Justice and Development (PJD), whose secretary general, Saaddine El Otmani, is the head of the Moroccan government, it expressed its reaction, which turned into a drama.

The PJD, the strongest bloc in the House of Representatives with 125 deputies out of 395, has built part of its credibility among the conservative Moroccan masses based on its intransigence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

When he was not yet the head of government, Dr. Saaddine El Otmani wrote an article entitled “Normalization Is a Civilizational Genocide.”

And above all, last August, El Otmani had trumpeted loudly before a meeting for the youth of his party that “Morocco, the king, the government, and the people, are resolutely hostile towards any normalization with the Zionist entity.”

A boy holds a scarf reading "Sahara will win." Sahrawi people of Toulouse gathered against the recognition by Israel of the sovereignty of the Morocco Kingdom on the Western Sahara and its inhabitants, the Sahrawis in exchange of a normalization of relations between Israel and Morocco. December 19, 2020. Photo by Alain Pitton, Nur Photo via Getty Images
 

The fact that El Otmani was forced by the Royal Palace to sign, in front of television cameras on Tuesday December 22, 2020, the tripartite agreements with Jared Kushner and a high representative of the “Zionist entity,” Meir Ben-Shabbat, a close adviser to the Israeli prime minister, was felt by him and his electoral base as a strong slap in the face.

On Wednesday, December 23, 2020, Abdelillah Benkiran, the predecessor of El Otmani as the head of the PJD and the government, stated that “the PJD could not oppose the decisions taken by the king” because it is part of the state. This disturbed the party’s base even more.

The public humiliation inflicted on El Otmani was, however, the price that had to be paid for accepting the meagre power granted by the Royal Palace. What is even more dramatic is that PJD ministers cannot even resign to escape the general opprobrium. In Morocco, the ministers, let alone the prime minister, do not resign. They are dismissed or resign at the request of the king.

Morocco, as recognized in the West, is a “moderate” Arab and Muslim country. However, if it is really moderate, it is only so in its relations with the European Union and the United States of America.

As for everything else, the Moroccan monarchy is a genuine autocracy. The King of Morocco reigns, governs, is the supreme chief, and the chief of staff of the Royal Armed Forces (FAR), and has the country’s greatest fortune. To support the legitimacy of his dynasty, he also proclaims himself as the “commander of the believers” and claims to be directly descended from the Prophet Muhammad.

If we add to these powers, both temporal and religious, the fact that the sovereign directly controls several “ministries of sovereignty,” such as the foreign affairs and the interior, and that all the secret services are under his control, it is easy to understand why Moroccans and their representatives in parliament and government, are unlikely to do much to reverse the royal decision on normalization with Israel.

[This article was originally published by Politics Today on 5 January 2021.]

Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 


[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412