In the midst of discreet police surveillance, dozens of people gather every week with kufiyas (handkerchiefs) and Palestinian flags in front of the Parliament headquarters in Rabat against Israel’s military operations in the Gaza Strip. Demonstrations that have brought together thousands of attendees have toured the streets of the capital and the main cities of Morocco, one of the five Arab countries that maintains official relations with the State of Israel, during the more than six months of war. “The regime’s policy has nothing to do with the people, and not only with regard to the Palestinian cause,” said engineer Taib Madmad, 68, leader of the Moroccan Front in Support of Palestine and Against Palestine, last Tuesday. Normalization, which brings together around twenty left-wing parties, unions and associations, in the first protest organized after the end of the Ramadan festivities. Faced with the formal calm with which the wave of concentrations is developing, some Islamist militants have already received prison sentences for questioning Morocco’s ties with the Israeli Government on social networks.
“Several of us here have been prosecuted for having opposed normalization with Israel in an act considered unauthorized by the authorities,” Madmad said in front of the legislative chambers building in Rabat. A dozen activists have been prosecuted for participating in a boycott action in November by blocking access to a Carrefour supermarket in Salé, a city adjacent to the capital. The organizers had accused the French distribution chain of providing food to the Israeli army in Gaza, through its local franchise. While awaiting trial, the head of the Palestine Support Front continues to participate in weekly rallies, which alternate with those organized by Islamist forces such as the Justice and Development Party, which led the government coalitions between 2011 and 2021. , or Justice and Spirituality, a movement not recognized as a legal party although tolerated.
Criticizing diplomatic ties with Israel, established in late 2020 after the United States recognized Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara, is not criminalized in the Penal Code. But attacking the institution of the monarchy means crossing a red line in Morocco. The Justice and Spirituality activist Abderramán Zankad, 48, was sentenced this month to five years in prison, accused of the crimes of disrespect for the king and attacking the symbols of the kingdom, for questioning the Arab rulers who have sponsored diplomatic normalization with Israel. His lawyers allege that Zankad limited himself to stating on Facebook that “normalization will only fall when those who made it possible fall,” according to the Efe agency.
In August of last year, fellow Justice and Spirituality activist Said Bukyud was sentenced to five years in prison after having attacked the establishment of relations between Morocco and Israel on social media. He was also accused of “undermining institutions,” but his sentence was reduced to three years in prison after an appeal after sentencing him for a crime “against the person of the king or the heir to the throne.” Bukyud, a resident of Qatar, had been detained at the Casablanca airport, where he traveled to spend a vacation with his family in Morocco.
Three demonstrations against normalization with Israel brought together more than 10,000 people in Rabat in October, December and February. At the beginning of April, several thousand also marched through the streets of Casablanca. Protest rallies occur regularly in dozens of cities. 88% of Moroccans reject diplomatic recognition of Israel, according to a survey by the Arab Center for Research and Political Studies, cited by the digital information portal Morocco World News.
Between the State apparatus – which seeks to preserve the assets of relations with Israel: such as, among others, sovereignty over the Sahara or military cooperation – and civil society, overwhelmingly outraged at the images of suffering of the Palestinians in the strip of Gaza, a growing gap is opening up through which a latent crisis appears in the Maghreb country. The prison sentences and ongoing prosecutions against critical voices and protest participants are an example of the tension that has brought discontent to the surface. Human rights defense organizations demand that the authorities respect freedom of expression protected by the 2011 Constitution.
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Between ambiguity and commitment
King Mohamed VI himself leads support for the Palestinian cause within the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). After a period of ambiguity during the clashes between Israelis and Palestinians in the first months of 2023, Morocco was quick to condemn the invasion of Israeli security forces into the Al Aqsa mosque, the third holiest site in Islam. At that time, there was also an unusual confrontation between the Islamists of the PJD and the Foreign Minister, Naser Burita, architect of the diplomatic rapprochement with Israel.
As president of the Al Quds Committee (Jerusalem, in Arabic) of the OIC, the king of Morocco has been in favor of the two-state solution in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and has ordered the sending of humanitarian aid to the Gazan population . Formally, the three-party coalition that governs in Rabat has demanded that Israel “immediately end the war in Gaza” and has denounced the attacks against “defenseless” civilians in the Strip.
The war in Gaza also has internal repercussions in Morocco. The Justice and Development Party, under whose mandate the normalization of relations was approved in 2020, is relegated in the electoral polls after the wear and tear suffered in a decade of exercising power. Meanwhile, Justice and Charity, which seemed to prefer to be absent from the political board and play the card of broad social implementation, is now sending signals of aspiring to monopolize the space of political Islamism in Morocco. At an organization conclave held in February, the religious movement presented a new political platform. Its detailed profile is equivalent to an electoral program, with new mentions of the market economy and the integration of young people and women in society. However, it omits to question, as was a constant in the past, the role of the monarch as commander of believers, as the undisputed religious leader of the Maghreb country.
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