Guerre Israël-Gaza Octobre 2023

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Israel-Hamas Conflict Tests Abraham Accords

Morocco’s friendly ties with Israel are facing a backlash from some pro-Palestinian citizens as Sudan renews ties with Iran.

By Nosmot Gbadamosi, a multimedia journalist and the writer of Foreign Policy’s weekly Africa Brief.



OCTOBER 11, 2023, 4:27 AM

Morocco Faces Pro-Palestinian Protests and Sudan Renews Iran Ties
Arab League foreign ministers are expected to meet today in Cairo to discuss ways “to stop the Israeli aggression” against the Gaza Strip, the group said in a statement.
The extraordinary session was scheduled in response to a Palestinian request. Arab League chief Ahmed Aboul Gheit condemned “the violence, but from all sides.” Gheit, a former Egyptian foreign minister during the final years of Hosni Mubarak’s presidency, traveled to Moscow on Sunday to discuss the situation in Gaza with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. They agreed to partner to “stop the bloodshed.”
Cairo, which has historically played the role of mediator between Israel and Hamas, said it warned Israel of possible escalation by Hamas in Gaza while Israel was focused on violence in the West Bank. “We have warned them an explosion of the situation is coming, and very soon, and it would be big. But they underestimated such warnings,” an Egyptian official told The Associated Press. The Israeli government denied the warnings, claiming they were a “complete lie.”
More than 1,000 Israelis and more than 800 Palestinians have been killed since Saturday. So far, the only African nations to strongly denounce Saturday’s attack by Hamas are Kenya and Morocco, the current chair of the Arab League. Moussa Faki Mahamat, the chairperson of the commission of the African Union, said that the “denial of the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people, particularly that of an independent and sovereign state, is the main cause of the permanent Israeli-Palestinian tension.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made strengthening the U.S.-brokered Abraham Accords a top priority, and he has attempted to push for African states to establish embassies—controversially—in Jerusalem. But while the accords have served to reduce official hostility to Israel from signatory nations, the agreement has had limited impact on pro-Palestinian public opinion across the Middle East. A unilateral decision by the African Union’s Faki to restore Israel’s observer status caused uproar and led to the unceremonious removal in February of Israel’s senior delegate to the African Union summit in Ethiopia.
A devastating war in Sudan has complicated its relations with Israel. On Monday, Sudan agreed to exchange official delegations and restore diplomatic relations with Iran, which is allied with Hamas. Sudan had cut diplomatic ties with Iran in 2016 after the storming of the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Tehran.
Netanyahu has vowed that Israel will “return fire of a magnitude that the enemy has not known. The enemy will pay an unprecedented price.” Such words have prompted Moroccans to demonstrate in the capital, Rabat, in support of Palestine and push back against normalization with Netanyahu’s far-right government. Several Islamist groups and those on the left have taken a divergent stance to the Moroccan government. Morocco’s Islamist Justice and Development Party, which had a parliamentary majority until the 2021 elections, praised the Hamas attack as “a natural and legitimate reaction to daily violations.”
Rabat has struggled to align strong support for Israel against domestic opposition. The two countries normalized ties in exchange for recognition of Morocco’s sovereignty over the disputed Western Sahara, where the Polisario Front seeks independence. Since the deal, Morocco has ramped up purchases of drones and other military equipment from Israel, in an arms race with its rival Algeria, which backs Palestine and Polisario.
Riccardo Fabiani, the North Africa project director at the International Crisis Group, said the Moroccan monarchy has made a concerted effort to conflate the conflict between Israel, Iran, and Hamas with its conflict in Western Sahara. “There is this idea that the Moroccans have been promoting that the Polisario Front has ties with Iran. That Algeria has ties with Iran and therefore Morocco’s fight in Western Sahara is akin or similar to Israel’s fight against Iran, and this is obviously completely imaginary,” he told Foreign Policy.
“There is very little if no evidence that there is any connection between the Polisario Front and Algeria on the one hand, and Iran and its proxies on the other, but it’s a narrative that has gained quite a bit of traction in Israel,” Fabiani said.
The linkage between normalization and Western Sahara has made it difficult for many Moroccans to openly oppose Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. “There are still these voices which are dissenting, but it’s becoming increasingly hard for them to express themselves … the public spaces have really shrunk,” Fabiani said. In turn, Morocco’s stance has served to further solidify Algeria’s support for the Palestinian cause.
In recent months, there had been talks that the Abraham Accords and a potential normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia could lead Egypt and Morocco to broker de-escalation in the Israel-Hamas conflict. But as fighting spreads and a possible Israeli reoccupation of Gaza looms, it is a stark reminder that the Abraham Accords will not bring peace.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/10/11/israel-hamas-morocco-sudan-abraham-accords/

replaysat a écrit:

https://twitter.com/qudsn/status/1712919528147984666

https://twitter.com/301military/status/1712926838152888685

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