Israeli soldier Moshe Avichzer, who spent three months in Gaza while serving in the military, has been denounced before the Moroccan courts by a group of lawyers who accuse him of being involved in war crimes, a crime of universal jurisdiction in the Maghreb country. Avichzer – whose age has not been specified, although military service is usually carried out between 18 and 21 years old – travelled to Marrakech on holiday this summer after being discharged from the army. In the imperial city – as the four capitals that Morocco has had throughout history are called – he posted images of his visit to nightclubs and tourist sites; in the posts he allegedly boasted of his intervention in the conflict in the Strip.
His Instagram profile also included photos of him inside half-destroyed houses in the Palestinian enclave. All these images have since been deleted, but copies captured by supporters of the Palestinian cause have been included in the complaint filed. The public prosecutor of the Rabat Court of Appeals, which is responsible for universal justice, is now examining for the first time an accusation against a soldier from Israel, a country with which Morocco normalised relations in December 2020 following the recognition by the United States of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara.
“I fear that the complaint against Avichzer will not go ahead and will be dropped,” admits Yusef Abu Hasan, president of the Moroccan Front for the Support of Palestine and Against Normalisation with Israel, an organisation that has organised mass marches in Morocco against the war in Gaza. “The case began here in Marrakech, but is now in the hands of a court in the capital with national jurisdiction over terrorism and universal justice,” he says in a telephone conversation. “The Israeli soldier has most likely already left the country,” he admits.
He says that the demobilized soldier posed as a Jew of Moroccan origin, due to the birth of one of his parents, and that he presented himself as an Israeli throughout the city. “He visited the Yamaa el Fna square, the big hotels and the famous tourist sites, and he published everything on his social networks, especially on Instagram, where he boasted of having killed Palestinians and occupied houses,” Abu Hasan details. “He later cancelled his accounts, but the lawyers have a copy of the images,” he warns.
“First and foremost, we are human rights defenders,” Abddesamad Taarij, one of the lawyers who filed the complaint against Avichzer, said at the outset. “We cannot remain indifferent to the tragedy of a people, such as the Palestinians, with whom we have cultural and historical ties.” The complaint was filed in late July, following the publication of accusations by supporters of the Palestinian cause against the soldier on social media, after his photos in the southern Moroccan resort town were circulated and linked to images on his social media showing his participation in a “genocidal war,” according to his detractors.
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A group of lawyers then filed a complaint with the public prosecutor at the Marrakech Court of Appeal. “We were received at the public prosecutor’s office and referred to the public prosecutor at the Rabat Court of Appeal,” explains Taarij, who suggests that the authorities did not veto the filing of the complaint on procedural or jurisdictional grounds, as in other cases.
“The public prosecutor has now begun to examine the complaint promptly and will carry out preliminary investigations, presumably secretly, into all the facts presented in order to decide whether to accept or dismiss the complaint,” the lawyer explained in a telephone conversation. “It is necessary to check whether the soldier is still in Moroccan territory or whether he has already been questioned by the police. There is still no precise information,” he added. “In any case, if he had been arrested, we would have had to have been notified. We do not know whether he has a Moroccan passport, which the descendants of emigrants are entitled to; the law allows war crimes committed abroad to be prosecuted here.”
“No one knows what the outcome of this accusation will be, but what is essential for us is the defence of the human rights of the Palestinians and the definitive breaking off of diplomatic relations with Israel,” he concludes. “Everything indicates that the Arab countries that have normalised their reactions to Israel have lost out.” Morocco is one of the five Arab countries that maintain official relations with the State of Israel, along with Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
“The regime’s policy has nothing to do with the people, and not only with regard to the Palestinian cause,” Taib Madmad, leader in Rabat of the Moroccan Front for the Support of Palestine, which brings together some twenty left-wing parties, unions and associations, told this newspaper. Madmad and other activists have been indicted for participating in a boycott action against Israel by blocking access to a Carrefour supermarket in Sale, a city bordering the capital. The organisers had accused the French distribution chain of supplying food to the Israeli army in Gaza, through its local franchise.
Gap between state and society
Between the state apparatus, which seeks to preserve the assets of relations with Israel, such as sovereignty over the Sahara or military cooperation, and civil society, overwhelmingly outraged by the images of suffering of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, a fracture has opened up, revealing a latent crisis in the Maghreb country.
King Mohammed VI is the leader of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in supporting the Palestinian cause, heading the so-called Al Quds Committee (as Jerusalem is known in the Islamic world). The Moroccan government systematically condemns Israeli military actions against Palestinian civilians in Gaza, where it sends humanitarian aid, and has expressed its support for a two-state solution.
Morocco is also experiencing a serious internal contradiction over its military alliance with Israel as the war in Gaza drags on. An Israeli Navy ship called at the port of Tangier Med at the beginning of June amid accusations of “participation in genocide” by the leaders of the Moroccan Front for the Support of Palestine. This organisation regretted that the authorities did not follow the example of the Spanish government, which in May prohibited a Danish-flagged ship from India carrying 27 tonnes of explosives bound for Israel from calling at the port of Cartagena.
Following the normalisation of bilateral relations in 2020, within the framework of the so-called Abraham Accords sponsored by the United States between the Jewish state and five Arab countries, the governments of Israel and Rabat signed in 2021 a military and security cooperation agreement unprecedented in other Muslim nations. In exchange for endorsing the rapprochement between its two strategic allies at both ends of the Mediterranean, Washington agreed to recognise Morocco’s sovereignty over the former Spanish colony of Western Sahara, a territory still awaiting decolonisation, according to the UN, to give a boost to Rabat’s diplomatic position.
Last July, the Moroccan government signed a contract with the state-owned company Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) for the purchase of a spy satellite for a sum of 1 billion dollars. The announcement of the arms sale came amid a wave of popular protests against the war in Gaza, which spread to university campuses, where students were called to go to receive their exam results wearing their passports. kufiya, the traditional Palestinian headscarf.
