Morocco-Israel ties ‘already normal’, says Rabat
JERUSALEM: Morocco’s relations with Israel are unique in the Arab world and bilateral ties were “already normal” before a diplomatic normalisation was announced, Morocco’s foreign minister said Sunday.
Morocco on Thursday announced a “resumption of relations” with Israel, shortly after US President Donald Trump tweeted that Rabat and the Jewish state had “agreed to full diplomatic relations”.
Morocco closed its liaison office in Tel Aviv in 2000 at the start of the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising.
Morocco’s announcement is widely seen as making it the fourth Arab country this year to unveil plans to normalise ties with Israel through a USbrokered deal, following the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan.
But in an interview with Israel’s Yediot Ahronot newspaper published Sunday, Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita said, “Israel’s relations with Morocco are special and can’t be compared to the relations that Israel has with any other Arab country.”
“From our perspective, we aren’t talking about normalisation because relations were already normal,” Bourita was quoted as saying by the paper.
“We’re talking about (reformalising) the relations between the countries to the relations we had, because there have been relations the entire time. They never stopped,” he added.
A palace statement last week said King Mohammed VI had agreed to establish full diplomatic relations with Israel with “minimal delay”.
That followed Trump’s recognition of Morocco’s contested sovereignty in Western Sahara, infuriating the Algerianbacked Polisario Front, which controls about one-fifth of the vast, arid region.