Abstract
The normalisation agreement concluded between Morocco and Israel on 22 December 2020 under the framework of the Abraham Accords represents far more than a geopolitical transaction. It is the institutionalisation of a relationship whose roots extend across more than two and a half millennia of Jewish civilisational presence on Moroccan soil. Drawing on diplomatic history, international relations theory, and the sociology of religion and identity, this article argues that Morocco–Israel relations have evolved into a multidimensional strategic partnership shaped by three converging dynamics: a deep historical memory of Jewish–Muslim coexistence; the structural imperatives of security and economic modernisation; and the regional geopolitical reconfigurations generated by Iranian expansionism and American diplomatic entrepreneurship. The article surveys that evolution from ancient communities through clandestine Cold War diplomacy to the post-2020 architecture of cooperation, and assesses the structural constraints—Palestinian solidarity, Algerian rivalry, and domestic political pressures—that continue to limit the partnership’s depth.
1. Introduction
The Abraham Accords of 2020, which formalised normalisation between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco, constituted the most consequential reconfiguration of Middle Eastern diplomacy since the Egypt–Israel Peace Treaty of 1979 (Freilich, 2021; Muasher & Yousef, 2021). For Morocco, however, the accord possessed a distinctive genealogy rooted not merely in geopolitical calculation but in a civilisational history of Jewish–Muslim coexistence that scholars have long identified as singular in the Islamicate world (Gottreich, 2007; Kenbib, 1994). King Mohammed VI, Commandeur des Croyants and custodian of the Alaouite tradition of religious pluralism, framed normalisation not as a concession to external pressure but as the reactivation of bonds severed by the upheavals of the twentieth century (Embassy of Morocco, 2020; Zisenwine, 2021).
Moroccan foreign policy has long combined official commitment to the Palestinian cause with back-channel ties to Jerusalem—participating in Arab League consensus while refusing the maximalist positions of rejectionist states (Hamid, 2020; Willis, 2012). The 2020 accord brought into the open a subterranean relationship already dense with cultural, commercial, and security threads. Its intelligibility requires attention to three analytically distinct but empirically intertwined dynamics: the long historical memory of Jewish–Moroccan coexistence; the structural incentives of security alignment and economic modernisation; and the regional and global geopolitical reconfigurations—above all the Iranian threat and American sponsorship—that created the permissive conditions for the accord (Chtatou, 2023; 2022, December 29).
2. Deep Roots: Jewish Morocco and the Tradition of Coexistence
The Jewish presence in Morocco is among the oldest and most continuous in the Diaspora, with literary evidence placing Israelite settlers in the Maghreb as contemporaries of the Second Temple period and rabbinic sources attesting to communities in Roman Mauretania Tingitana by the early centuries of the Common Era (Hirschberg, 1974). The dhimma framework that accompanied Islamisation permitted Jews to retain communal autonomy and participate in the commercial and scholarly life of Moroccan cities (Cohen, 1994; Stillman, 1979). The expulsion of Jews from Iberia in 1492 enriched existing Moroccan communities with the cultural and intellectual capital of Castilian Jewry (Benbassa & Rodrigue, 2000; Kenbib, 1994), while Alaouite monarchs adopted a generally protective stance, employing Jewish scholars, financiers, and diplomats in royal service and transforming prominent Jewish families into institutional pillars of the makhzen (Gottreich, 2007; Schroeter, 2008).
The mellah, or Jewish urban quarter, has been misread in some scholarship as enforced segregation analogous to the European ghetto. Revisionist historiography has demonstrated that it was equally an expression of communal self organisation, a locus of religious authority and commercial networking that enabled Jewish communities to thrive within the Moroccan urban fabric (Gottreich, 2007; Schroeter, 2008). Particularly significant for later bilateral relations is the shared veneration of saints at moussems: shrines such as those of Rabbi Amram Ben Diwan in Ouëzzane attract Jewish pilgrims from Israel, France, and North America alongside Muslim devotees, enacting a popular ecumenism that Morocco has increasingly mobilised as diplomatic and touristic soft power (Ben-Ami, 1998; Boum, 2013). King Mohammed V’s refusal to implement Vichy anti-Jewish legislation—however nuanced by subsequent historiography (Laskier, 1983)—retained its potency as symbolic capital in Morocco–Israel diplomatic discourse (Miller, 2013; Zisenwine, 2021).
3. Rupture and Continuity: The Twentieth Century and Clandestine Diplomacy
The 1948 Arab–Israeli War placed Moroccan Jews in a structurally ambiguous position: citizens of an emerging nation-state whose formal solidarity obligations were directed toward Arab Palestine (Layachi, 1998; Waterbury, 1970). The resulting emigration, channelled through the clandestine Operation Yakhin (1961–1964), transferred the majority of Morocco’s Jewish population—approximately 280,000 at independence in 1956—to Israel, with additional communities settling in France, Canada, and Spain (Laskier, 1994; Tsur, 2001). This migration simultaneously severed and deepened the bilateral relationship: it created a permanent Israeli constituency of Moroccan-Jewish origin numbering approximately one million citizens, while the covert cooperation between the Israeli government and Moroccan security services in facilitating emigration established the structural template of clandestine Morocco–Israel relations that persisted through subsequent decades (Hamid, 2020; Levey, 2007).
King Hassan II cultivated a distinctive form of discreet diplomacy toward Israel, positioning himself as a moderate interlocutor capable of bridging Arab and Israeli positions. His facilitation of back-channel communications that preceded President Sadat’s historic visit to Jerusalem in 1977, and his unprecedented hosting of Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres in Ifrane in July 1986, signalled Morocco’s willingness to occupy a distinctive position premised on intercession rather than rejectionism (Levey, 2007; Hamid, 2020). The Oslo process created a brief window of semi-open engagement, with Morocco and Israel establishing Liaison Offices in 1994, functioning as de facto diplomatic missions (Sela, 2018; Willis, 2012). The collapse of Camp David in 2000 and the eruption of the Second Intifada led King Mohammed VI to close those offices—but the underlying pattern of formal distancing combined with informal contact persisted as a defining structural feature of Moroccan diplomacy (Hamid, 2020; Willis, 2012).
4. The Abraham Accords and the Post-2020 Partnership
The Abraham Accords emerged from structural transformations that rendered Arab–Israeli normalisation strategically rational for a subset of Arab states regardless of progress on the Palestinian question: the Iranian threat, the decline of pan-Arab nationalism, and American diplomatic entrepreneurship under the Trump administration (Freilich, 2021; Guzansky & Winter, 2020). For Morocco, the December 2020 accord was inseparable from simultaneous American recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over the Western Sahara—a concession of supreme importance to Moroccan national identity for which Rabat had lobbied Washington for four decades (Hamid, 2020; Zisenwine, 2021). The joint declaration explicitly invoked Morocco’s “historic role in preserving the Jewish heritage and traditions of Moroccan Jews,” situating normalisation within a civilisational narrative that could potentially palliate domestic and Arab audiences uncomfortable with security-driven rapprochement (Embassy of Morocco, 2020; Boum, 2013).
Post 2020 Partnership
Post-2020 cooperation has expanded across four principal domains. In defense and security, the Royal Moroccan Armed Forces have procured Israeli systems. Pegasus spyware—whose deployment was documented by the Forbidden Stories consortium and generated diplomatic tensions with France (Amnesty International, 2021; Guimard, 2021). Additionally, drone and air defense technologies (IISS, 2023). In trade, bilateral flows grew from negligible levels to an estimated $150 million by 2022 across agricultural products, pharmaceutical inputs, and chemical fertilisers. This occurred while OCP Group engaged with Israeli agricultural technology firms on precision irrigation suited to Moroccan arid conditions (OCP Group, 2023). In technology, Israeli cybersecurity and water management enterprises have pursued joint ventures aligned with Morocco’s ambition to position Casablanca as a regional technology hub (Moroccan Ministry of Digital Transition, 2023). In cultural diplomacy, the approximately one million Israeli citizens of Moroccan Jewish origin—maintaining living connections to Moroccan language, music, and religious practice—provide a dense sociological substrate for bilateral engagement (Tsur, 2001). Morocco’s investments in Jewish heritage sites, including the Museum of Moroccan Judaism in Casablanca—the only Jewish museum in the Arab world—serve simultaneously as markers of pluralist identity, instruments of soft power, and attractions for heritage tourism (Boum, 2013; Schroeter, 2008).
5. Structural Constraints
A sober assessment of Morocco–Israel relations requires attention to three structural constraints that continue to limit the partnership’s depth and durability. First, the Palestinian question retains its symbolic centrality in Moroccan popular and political culture. Public opinion surveys since 2020 have consistently shown majority opposition to normalisation in its current form, particularly absent tangible progress toward Palestinian statehood (Arab Barometer, 2022). The Gaza war that erupted in October 2023 intensified these sentiments, mobilising street protests in Casablanca and Rabat and generating parliamentary demands for the suspension of diplomatic ties (International Crisis Group, 2024). The Moroccan government’s management of this tension reflects the adaptive authoritarianism characteristic of the makhzen system: formal maintenance of bilateral relations, rhetorical solidarity with Palestinian civilians, and selective constraint on civil society mobilisation against normalisation (Maghraoui, 2011; Brumberg, 2002).
This balancing act prevents Morocco from publicly celebrating the partnership as the UAE has done, limiting its domestic symbolic capital. Second, Algeria constitutes a persistent structural constraint. Relations frozen since the border closure of 1994 and the severance of diplomatic ties in 2021 are influenced by a competitive dynamic in which Algerian elites have framed Moroccan normalisation as a security threat, invoking the spectre of an “anti-Algerian axis” linking Rabat, Tel Aviv, and Washington (Hamid, 2020; IISS, 2023). While this framing overstates Israeli interest in the Morocco–Algeria rivalry, it has contributed to a regional security dynamic that complicates Moroccan diplomatic flexibility. Third, within Israel, segments of the left have questioned the ethics of intelligence cooperation involving Pegasus, while the growing weight of religious nationalist parties sceptical of diplomatic engagement with Arab states introduces uncertainty about the consistency of Israeli commitment across successive administrations (Rabinovich & Valensi, 2021).
6. Conclusion
Morocco–Israel relations in the post-2020 period represent a qualitative transformation of a long-standing but largely clandestine relationship, one whose depth and durability derive from the convergence of civilisational heritage, security imperatives, and economic modernisation goals. The millennial history of Jewish presence in Morocco and the tradition of royal protection and cultural coexistence it generated provide a cultural substrate for normalisation that is both genuinely distinctive and susceptible to instrumental mobilisation by state actors on both sides. The Abraham Accords institutionalised a relationship already dense with security, cultural, and commercial threads, transforming informal ties into a framework of formalised cooperation across multiple policy domains (Chtatou, 2023; 2022, December 29).
Whether this framework constitutes a strategic alliance in the technical sense—entailing formal security commitments, joint planning mechanisms, and shared threat assessment—remains debatable (Walt, 1987). The constraints analysed above suggest that Morocco–Israel alignment falls short of alliance in its fullest sense: it lacks formal security guarantees, is inhibited by domestic political sensitivities, and remains vulnerable to the Palestinian conflict’s convulsive pressures. Yet the partnership is of sufficient density and strategic significance to represent more than a simple diplomatic rapprochement, and both parties retain strong incentives to maintain and deepen it across the domains of defence, technology, trade, and cultural exchange. The Moroccan case illuminates the conditions under which Arab–Israeli normalisation can be sustained in the face of popular Palestinian solidarity: elite insulation from mass opinion, a distinctive historical narrative legitimising engagement, and a portfolio of tangible strategic gains creating domestic constituencies for the relationship. It equally illustrates the limits of normalisation as a tool for regional order—limits the Gaza war rendered unmistakably visible.
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