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Unlike the past two years, the third anniversary of the Morocco-US-Israel tripartite agreement was not really celebrated in the Kingdom. Marked by the silence of official voices, the anniversary saw instead thousands of Moroccans march in the streets of Rabat to demand the closure of the Israeli liaison office in Morocco.
These demands come in support of Palestinians, killed and displaced in a war against the Gaza strip. The war which killed at least 20,000 people, mostly women and children, has pushed Rabat to change its official tone towards Tel Aviv.
An unannounced freeze
Before the war broke out in Gaza, Morocco and Israel enjoyed fruitful diplomatic ties. In March, the Royal Court had even rebuked the Justice and Development Party for a statement that «disapproved» of the Moroccan Foreign Affairs Minister's position on Israel. The party accused the Minister of «defending the Zionist entity». To which the Royal Court responded, arguing that the Kingdom’s foreign policy was «a prerogative of the King» and it would not be «subject to blackmail».
However, after the war, Moroccan official communications were back to what they looked like before the signing of the tripartite agreement with Israel. Morocco started adopting a stricter language when addressing the conflict. On November 29, King Mohammed VI said in a letter addressed to the Chairman of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People that the «recent escalation is the result of Israel’s systematic, extremist practices, unilateral measures and repeated provocations in Al-Quds».
He added that these measures «undermine efforts to calm the situation; they also ruin international initiatives designed to end tensions and frustration, and to break the deadly cycle of violence».
Moreover, on the sidelines of the Arab-Russian Cooperation Forum, held earlier in December in Marrakech, the Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita criticized the international community’s inability «to stop the Israeli aggression against Gaza», which «is no longer acceptable and has no explanation».
Since the outbreak of the ongoing war on the Gaza Strip, the normalization process between Rabat and Tel Aviv has stopped, visits by Israeli government ministers to Rabat have stopped, and members of the Israeli Liaison Office left Rabat for Tel Aviv «for security reasons», according to the Israeli Foreign Ministry.
Also, the visit of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Morocco, which was initially scheduled for October, did not take place, knowing that he had received an invitation from King Mohammed VI following his country’s recognition of Morocco’s sovereignty over the Sahara.
The third anniversary of normalization... protests instead of celebrations
On the othe other hand, and contrary to the last couple of years, there were no official celebrations marking the third anniversary of normalizations. On the first anniversary of the tripartite agreement between Morocco, the US and Israel, a meeting was held via virtual conference and attended by Nasser Bourita, his Israeli counterpart, Yair Lapid, and the American Anthony Blinken. The Moroccan diplomat praised the results of the resumption of relations between Rabat and Tel Aviv and spoke about the signing of many bilateral agreements.
On the same occasion, a ceremony was also organized in Rabat, jointly by the US Embassy in Morocco and the Israeli diplomatic mission in the Kingdom.
In 2022, the Israeli Liaison Office organized a ceremony in Rabat, attended by Royal Advisor André Azoulay, Minister of Solidarity, Social Inclusion and Family, Awatef Hiar, and Minister of Energy Transition and Sustainable Development, Leila Benali.
After the beginning of the Israeli war on Gaza, official meetings were absent, and popular protests emerged instead, as many marches were organized in most Moroccan cities, to support the Palestinian people and demand the end of normalization.
Huge marches were organized in Casablanca and Rabat, the most recent of which was last Sunday, marking the third anniversary of the signing of the normalization agreement. During the march, thousands of Moroccans called for the closure of the Israeli liaison office in Rabat.
