"I have always believed in this peace which is materializing today before our eyes. I want to thank President Trump for carrying out these agreements and thank the King of Morocco Mohammed VI for this historic decision to make peace with Israel" Benjamin Netanyahu said in a televised address on Thursday (December 10) coinciding with the start of the Jewish Hanukkah holidays.
"We will first set up liaison offices, then direct diplomatic relations and direct flights between the two countries," added the Israeli prime minister.
"The Moroccan people and the Jewish people have always enjoyed warm relations in the modern era. Everyone knows the deep friendship shown by the King of Morocco and the Moroccan people towards the local Jewish community," said said Benjamin Netanyahu.
The latter also described as a "human bridge" between the two countries the "hundreds of thousands" of Jews of Moroccan origin now living in Israel.
In the 1950s and 1960s, shortly after the creation of Israel, Jews from Iraq, Yemen and Morocco emigrated to the Hebrew state where key positions were then in the hands of the Ashkenazi, Jews from European countries. central.
Named "Mizrahim", these Eastern Jews settled outside the big cities, and felt excluded at the time by the Israeli left in power, until the end of the 1970s when the current Likud party of Benjamin Netanyahu, courted this electorate to make it one of his electoral bases.
Palestinians castigate this deal
After the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan, Morocco on Thursday became the fourth Arab country since August to promise to establish diplomatic relations with the Jewish state.
The Palestinians had previously castigated normalization agreements with Sudan, Bahrain and the Emirates.
This Gulf country which also recently inaugurated the first direct commercial flights between Dubai and Tel Aviv.
Ditto for Morocco.
"It is a political sin which does not serve the Palestinian cause and encourages the occupation [name given by Palestinian officials to Israel] to continue to deny the rights of our people," Hazem Qassem told AFP. the spokesperson for Hamas, the Islamist movement in power in the Gaza Strip.
The latter also accused the Jewish state of "instrumentalizing" these agreements to justify "increasing settlements" in the occupied West Bank.
Over the past decade, and particularly under the tenure of Donald Trump, a key ally of Israel, settlements have experienced a significant boom in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
More than 450,000 Israelis live in settlements in the occupied West Bank, home to around 2.8 million Palestinians, which according to the UN and the European Union complicates the implementation of a "two-state" solution. a viable Palestinian state alongside Israel.
With AFP
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