X Liban is a negotiation that brought together a delegation from the French government with a delegation of party and political figures and

Moroccan notables in 1955, which laid the parameters for Morocco obtaining its independence from France by ending the protection system, and crystallizing a vision for future relations between the two countries.

Those negotiations paved the way for the return of Sultan Muhammad V to his throne after his exile that began in August 1953, and in turn became a controversial historical milestone, as some interested people consider them to consecrate a new phase of French control over the country's capabilities and options indirectly.

The historical context


Contrary to its expectations, the exile of Sultan Muhammad V to Madagascar, beginning on August 20, 1953, did not achieve the desired goals of the French colonialists in subjugating the country and putting down every movement that resisted his plans. Rather, national action cells were activated and the Liberation Army brigades were formed.

In this context, the President of the French Council, Pierre Mendes France Gilbert Crandval, appointed the Resident General of France in Rabat.

Crandvall was a moderate figure entrusted with the task of calming the situation through mainly political means, but the results were limited to the increasing tension of the resistance on the one hand, and the extremism of the French centenarians who rejected the return of Mohammed V and the independence of the Kingdom on the other hand.

This field situation coincided with the intensification of the blows of the Algerian revolution, leading to the famous military setback for the French army in the Battle of Dien in Ban Fu in Indochina in May 1955. All contexts combined to make the continuation of the material colonization of Morocco a costly task and the time to mitigate it.

The French decision was to isolate the Moroccan and Tunisian cases from the Algerian issue, and thus to initiate arrangements to end the colonial presence in both countries.

Participants


The composition of the French and Moroccan delegations that participated in the talks was controversial.

In contrast to a harmonious French delegation that included Prime Minister Edgar Faure, Minister of Foreign Affairs Benay, General Koenig, Minister of Defense, Robert Schuman and Pierre Jolie, the Moroccan delegation came in dissonant elements, as it included figures representing the parties of the national movement, especially the Independence Party and the Shura and Independence Party, as well as influential figures close to the authority. French.

Many observers who lived through this stage and historians consider that the Paris authorities floated the national ranks in a delegation of 37 elements, which included representatives of French interests in Morocco, which made the results of the negotiations not deviate from the goals of France, which is looking to lift its hand from Morocco with its sovereign symbols, without compromising its interests. Economic, cultural and strategic in the Kingdom.

In this context, the late politician and writer Abd al-Hadi Boutaleb, who was part of the Moroccan delegation of the Shura and Independence Party in the "X-Liban" meetings, recounts that France wanted "to be a Moroccan dialogue conference, that is, between traditionalists and patriots in order to reach a consensus between them on the issue of the throne on the throne." A common ground on which the two parties can settle by mutual consent. "

More than that, France wanted the delegation to include some notables known for their loyalty to the colonialists and their hostility to the patriots, such as the powerful Pasha of Marrakesh.

Abd al-Hadi Boutaleb says, “When we arrived at X-Liban on August 22, 1955, we were told that Pasha al-Thami al-Kalawi and the other leaders were in the city.

The French were forced after a delay and then carefully considered to accept the viewpoint of the Moroccan delegation, and in the end they returned the pimps loyal to the public residency to Morocco.

Repercussions


The negotiations ended in the first stage with the appointment of a trusteeship council to oversee the throne after the removal of the illegitimate sultan installed by France, known as Ibn Arafa.

However, under pressure, France accepted the return of Sultan Muhammad V to Morocco in 1955, and the signing of the independence treaty on March 2, 1956 with France.

France - and some of its men - were trying to separate the return of Sultan Mehmed V from the path of the country's independence, but the members of the national movement clung to the demand for the return of the Sultan as a condition for completing the political process.

France finally acquiesced in the landing of Mohammed V's plane on the territory of the Kingdom on November 16, 1955, at Rabat-Salé airport.

Reactions


The Liberation Army and the Armed Resistance were not satisfied with the X-Liban negotiations, which they considered a mere trick to beautify the face of colonialism and consecrate it through France's aides in the Kingdom. The Moroccan scholar, the Mahdi El-Nagra, described the negotiations as a "betrayal" of the country.

And from Cairo, the voice of Leader Mohamed Abdel-Karim Al-Khattabi came in a message published in the newspaper "The Struggle of the Maghreb" on January 7, 1956, in which he said, "The Rabat group led the surrendered group of Tunis and brought the Ex-Liban agreement into action and implementation. Moroccan with sweet words, while she is walking in the same way as the Tunis Agreement and will demand the militants to lay down their arms, after she asked them to calm down, under the pretext that the negotiation is only in calm, and calm can only be by throwing weapons and handing it over to this ritual group sitting on its thrones when the enemies are free to destroy Algeria. From falling into the set trap, and we are sure that the Moroccan people will continue to struggle and struggle until they leave the countries of the Maghreb, but from all of North Africa, the last French soldier carrying arms from the colonial group. "

Indeed, the prominent leader of the Istiqlal Party, Abdel Rahim Bouabid (who later became the first writer of the Socialist Union of Popular Forces), admitted, in front of the criticisms of members of the Istiqlal Party in its first exceptional conference in 1955, that the party had been subjected to moderation in terms of its representation in the first government of Morocco of Independence.

"We have accepted it reluctantly," he said.

As for the late thinker Muhammad Abed Al-Jabri, he considers the X-Liban negotiations a consecration of the birth of what he calls the


"third"

force

(between the monarchy and the national movement) that later tilted the right-wing conservative trend in the face of the democratic movement.