The Moroccan decision to normalize relations with Israel is thus not a question of recognition itself but rather a resumption of earlier relations: with Moroccan recognition, trade with Israel could now also grow. In return, the US president fulfilled a decades-old goal of Morocco by backing its contested sovereignty in Western Sahara. Morocco has sought to temper the anger by insisting that relations with Israel are not new. The effort was to be coordinated by the United States International Development Finance Corporation. “It’s something that can pretty dramatically escalate, and Trump has just lit it on fire,” said Hannah Armstrong, an independent analyst who has worked on the Maghreb and Sahel regions for over a decade. By contrast, Sudan has stopped short of declaring full and normalized relations with Israel and recently threatened to withdraw from the agreement if Congress does not give it immunity from terrorism lawsuits that families of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks want to bring against the country for harboring Mr. bin Laden years before the attacks. Jared Kushner, US President Donald Trump's son-in-law and advisor, is due to arrive Tuesday in Morocco from Israel on the first direct commercial flight between the two countries since they normalised ties. Between 1975 and 1991, they fought a war against Morocco under the Polisario Front. Morocco also has close ties with Saudi Arabia, which has given its tacit support to the normalization process with Israel, even at a time when peacemaking with the Palestinians is at a standstill. Morocco became the third Arab state this year, after the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, to normalise ties with Israel under US-brokered deals, while Sudan has pledged to follow suit. Morocco is home to North Africa's largest Jewish community, which has been there since ancient times and grew with the arrival of Jews expelled from Spain by Catholic kings from 1492. Mattel's new PlayBack program will recycle old toy materials for future Mattel products. A spokesman for Mr. Biden’s transition team declined to comment on Thursday. “This is an issue that’s been out there for a long time, and quite frankly, there’s just been no progress on a resolution,” he said. Mohamed Daadaoui, a Moroccan academic, noted that Morocco and Israel already had economic, military and cultural ties. "The new agreement is merely the formalisation of a de facto partnership between Morocco and Israel dating back 60 years," said Moroccan media boss Ahmed Charai. Israel and Morocco agreed on Thursday to normalize relations in a deal brokered with U.S. help, making Morocco the fourth Arab country to set aside hostilities with Israel in the past four months. In 2018, long before the normalization deals were announced, Morocco seemed to try and gain favor with the administration of President Donald J. Trump, Israel, and … Morocco and Israel agreed to normalize ties in an agreement brokered by the Trump administration this past December. WASHINGTON — Morocco has agreed to a rapprochement with Israel in return for American recognition of the kingdom’s sovereignty over a long-disputed territory, under a deal announced on Thursday that gives President Trump another diplomatic victory in his final weeks in office. Trump and Netanyahu at the signing of the Abraham Accords. The Moroccan government downplayed the announcement from Washington that the move amounted to a full or new normalization with Israel, noting years of ongoing if opaque relations. Israeli media are reporting that Israel and Morocco have reached an agreement on allowing direct flights between those two countries. At the same time Israel and Morocco are due to reopen diplomatic offices and activate economic cooperation between them. Has Russell Westbrook's dominance turned the Wizards into a playoff sleeper? The deal came together with the help of a Moroccan investor, Yariv Elbaz, who does business in Israel, and acted as a go-between for Washington and Rabat. Morocco became the third Arab state in 2020 to normalize ties with Israel under US-brokered deals, joining the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. He said that the normalization agreement with Morocco indicates that the Arab states are seeing a small window of opportunity with Donald Trump in the White House and they want to exploit it. Outgoing President Donald Trump's double announcement of a normalisation of ties between Morocco and Israel and US recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara has prompted mixed reactions. Ruth Maclean contributed reporting from Dakar, Senegal, and Ronen Bergman from Tel Aviv. In talks dating to 2017, officials discussed the promise of American recognition of Western Sahara as a condition of warming ties with Israel. Morocco has agreed to establish full diplomatic relations with Israel, President Trump announced on Thursday. Thursday’s agreement also hands Morocco’s monarch, King Mohammed VI, a long-demanded prize: American recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over the disputed Western Sahara territory. As part of the recognition agreement, the United States diplomatic mission to Morocco will open a consulate in Dakhla, a city in Western Sahara. They will be reopened as part of Thursday’s agreement, Mr. Bourita said. The recently announced rapprochement between Morocco and Israel goes back several years, especially in the economic and commercial field. A senior Trump administration official confirmed on Thursday that the development office was considering investments worth up to $3 billion in Morocco over three years, but said they were not linked to the reconciliation with Israel. In a December 15, 2020 article, Ahmed Assid, a Moroccan secularist and political activist who belongs to the Amazigh (Berber) minority, welcomed Morocco's normalization agreement with Israel, which had been announced on December 10 along with a U.S. declaration recognizing Moroccan sovereignty over the Western Sahara. A demonstration in Rabat, Morocco, against normalizing relations with Israel in September. After US President Donald Trump announced on Twitter that Morocco and Israel have agreed to normalize diplomatic ties, the ambassador shared … If the two countries ultimately open embassies, Israel’s new agreement with Morocco would be similar to the accords that the Trump administration helped broker with Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates in September. Another Arab-majority Muslim country has recognized its … Israeli-Moroccan relations are the official relations between the State of Israel and the Kingdom of Morocco. Morocco Signals to Israel It Does Not Want Public Ceremony to Mark Normalization . Coming on the heels of the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain normalizing relations with Israel, this signals that a tectonic shift in Middle East politics is underway…if President Trump is reelected. Rabat does not view its agreement to normalize ties with Israel, brokered by the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump earlier this month, as part of the Abraham Accords In exchange, the United States will recognize Morocco’s claim to the disputed Western Sahara region, a quid pro quo that President Trump announced over Twitter. After years of war, the U.N. brokered a cease-fire in 1991 that called for a referendum on independence for Western Sahara. Negotiations leading to Morocco's resumption of ties with Israel included the opening of a US consulate in Western Sahara, and US investments which Moroccan media described as "colossal". “There is something extremely immoral in the way they are exploiting countries’ needs and demands,” she said. This framework is helpful to understand the new pact. With the agreement, which has been under discussion since 2017, Morocco becomes the fourth Muslim-majority state to pledge warmer official relations with Israel this fall under accords brokered by the Trump administration. Morocco to normalize ties with Israel in deal with Trump over Western Sahara. 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. Today, Morocco has a Jewish population of about 4,000, said Samuel L. Kaplan, the U.S. ambassador to Rabat from 2009 to 2013. In January, the two countries signed an … “Not sure this is the best decision #Morocco should make right now domestically,” he wrote on Twitter. Liaison offices between Israel and Morocco were established in 1994 after the Israeli-Palestinian peace agreements known as the Oslo Accords, but they closed after the outbreak of the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, in 2000. Why Israel Wins. The Israel-Morocco agreement can best be seen as a win-lose-win-lose-win arrangement. It undercuts an independence movement in the Western Sahara region, which has rejected Morocco’s claims of sovereignty, with United Nations support, and could fuel instability in that yearslong dispute. The flight from Tel Aviv to Rabat is seen as highly symbolic after Morocco announced on December 10 a "resumption of relations" with Israel. The two countries have long had intelligence ties, including a shared operation in 1995 to recruit Osama bin Laden’s Moroccan secretary to gather information and ultimately assassinate him. Morocco becomes the fourth Muslim-majority state to do so as part of a push by the Trump administration. Morocco did not suspend relations with Israel until after the outbreak of the Palestinian intifada in 2000. Nothing exists in a vacuum. King Mohammed VI has said Morocco will remain an advocate for the Palestinians, but the Palestinians like the Polisario have cried foul and condemned the normalisation announcement. Microsoft and partners may be compensated if you purchase something through recommended links in this article. The normalization of diplomatic ties between Rabat and Tel Aviv now exists within the binary paradigm of Moroccan political narratives, typified by the hashtags # Morocco First and # Normalization is Treason. By Lara Jakes, Isabel Kershner, Aida Alami and David M. Halbfinger. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel celebrated the announcement at a prearranged, televised Hanukkah lighting ceremony in Jerusalem, accompanied by David M. Friedman, the American ambassador to Israel. He predicted “a very warm peace,” given that Israel and Morocco have maintained some ties for more than half a century. Many Israelis have visited Morocco in recent years, traveling via third countries but entering on Israeli passports. Morocco became the third Arab state this year, after the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, to normalise ties with Israel under US-brokered deals, while Sudan has pledged to follow suit. The pro-normalization view takes a pragmatic stance that aspires to protect territorial integrity and gain enormous economic benefits. Between 2014 and 2017 the volume of trade exchanges stood at $149 million, according to statistics published by Moroccan newspapers. Morocco will become the fourth majority-Arab state to normalize its diplomatic ties with Israel this year, President Donald Trump announced Thursday, part of a … In a commentary published earlier this month in the Jerusalem Post, he said the two countries had a "shared history", adding that he was "overcome with pride and gratitude" when the deal was announced.