In December 2020, as the Trump administration lived its last weeks, an unofficial tripartite deal was announced between the US, Israel and Morocco. Morocco and Israel normalised ties, opening embassies, and in exchange the US formally recognised Morocco’s claims to the occupied Western Sahara. This is only a formalisation of relations between the three states, which have been working together for decades to put down anti-imperialist movements. The Trump administration had been diverting both military and development aid to those countries ready to open embassies in Israel and normalise the occupation of Palestine. Morocco’s King Mohammed VI and ruling class have been awarded billion-dollar rewards for their declaration of support for Zionism.
As Joe Biden starts his presidential term, he is not expected to reverse this situation. Morocco’s monarchy has remained a key ally of US and European imperialism throughout the Cold War and up until today. Morocco is on the strategic Straits of Gibraltar, while for decades it retained the only pro-imperialist government in North Africa, as puppet monarchs and colonial administrations were overthrown in Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt in the 1950s and 1960s. The Western Sahara, though sparsely populated and with a harsh environment, is rich in resources like phosphates and, if independent, would likely have an anti-imperialist government (see our article Western Sahara returns to armed struggle).
Normalisation with Zionism
The US-brokered deal came as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to normalise, or often rather formalise, relations between Arab League countries and the Israeli state. Though many states in the region were already US allies and maintained discreet ties with Israel, to publicly support the Zionist occupation of Palestine is an extremely unpopular measure. That is why the Trump administration has only succeeded in buying off Morocco and the Gulf monarchies, and in pressuring Sudan’s new government – which would otherwise be on the US’s ‘state sponsors of terrorism’ list.
In return for Morocco’s agreement to normalise ties with Israel, the US offered a list of rewards, according to Israeli newspaper Haaretz. Israel and Morocco would cooperate on water resources, finance, investment and civil aviation. The US International Development Finance Corporation will invest up to $3 billion in support of private investments in Morocco, and across Sub-Saharan Africa in joint ventures with Moroccan businesses. These investments would end up in banks, hotels and renewable energy, sectors where Moroccan King Mohammed VI owns private companies. Just the day after the Morocco-Israel agreement was made public, Trump announced new arms sales to Morocco for a value of $1 billion. The deal would include access by Morocco to US-made F-35 fighter aircraft, the most advanced to date, which only a limited few militaries have access to. Mohammed VI signed another arms deal with Israeli prime minister Netanyahu, worth $48 million. Both sales included military drones to be used in the Western Sahara.
Notably, the US would be the first country in the world to recognise the Western Sahara as part of Morocco, rather than a colonised territory, as the UN still labels it. The Polisario Front, the Western Sahara’s liberation organisation, still claims the Sahrawis want to form and independent state and is calling for a referendum for self-determination. Morocco has rejected all calls for such a vote. Up until Trump’s announcement, all countries either recognised the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic – the Polisario Front’s government in exile – as the legitimate government of the Western Sahara, or they supported Morocco in silence. Even France, the principal imperialist power that has historically backed the Moroccan monarchy, has never publicly acknowledged the occupation as legitimate, and neither has the Israeli government.
Mohammed VI refused any form of public ceremony following normalisation with Israel. Morocco’s population is largely opposed to this move, and thousands have been protesting on the streets of Rabat and other cities for months. Moroccan security forces cracked down on this movement, arresting its leaders as far back as October, when news about the deal was beginning to spread.
Morocco’s kings and Mossad: A secret history of collaboration
Historically, the Moroccan state has had to deny any ties to Israel, given the strong support of its population for the Palestinian cause for liberation. As most Arab countries attempted to isolate the newly declared Zionist state in the post-WW2 period, Moroccan King Hassan II (Father of Mohammed VI) worked with Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service, beneath a veneer of support for Palestine.
Moroccan secret collaboration with the Israeli state started in the 1960s. One of Hassan II’s first actions after ascending to the throne in 1961 was to negotiate the emigration of all Jews to the Israeli state. Morocco was once home to the largest community of Jews in North Africa, at around 250,000 in 1948. Though his predecessor had forbidden Jewish emigration, Hassan II agreed with payments in ‘compensation’ for each citizen that left. Today, it is estimated one million Israeli citizens are of Moroccan heritage, and up to the pandemic about 50,000 Israeli tourists visited Morocco every year. To sustain the façade that there were no direct flights between the two countries, planes taking off from Israel would stop in Malta for 30 minutes, before continuing towards Morocco.
There are suspicions that Mehdi Ben Barka, a historic Moroccan anti-imperialist and republican political figure, was murdered by Mossad as part of this deal. After the end of the French protectorate over Morocco in 1956, Ben Barka became the primary opponent to the monarchy, having founded the left-wing, anti-imperialist National Union of Popular Forces. In Hassan II’s French-backed attack against Algeria in 1963, Ben Barka called on Moroccan soldiers to refuse to fight. He was exiled to Paris, were he disappeared in 1965. In 1975 a Time magazine article involved French, Moroccan and Israeli agents in his death.
The line of fortifications built by Morocco to keep Sahrawi forces out of occupied territory, the ‘Berm’, used expertise from the Israeli military. The line is comprised of sand ramparts, surveillance technology and millions of explosive mines. The Berm was modelled after the ‘Bar Lev Line’, which was built on the Eastern banks of the Suez Canal as Israel occupied the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt (1967-1973). A bad choice, perhaps, as in 1973 the Egyptian army overran the Bar Lev Line in just two hours, hosing down the massive earthen ramparts with pumps using water from the canal. Luckily for Moroccan occupation forces, there are no large water sources accessible to the Polisario.
Polisario Front soldiers continue attacks on Moroccan occupation force
Last November, Morocco broke the UN-brokered 1991 truce with the Polisario Front, which represents the Sahrawi people, by crossing the ceasefire line (See: ‘Western Sahara returns to armed struggle’ on our website). The Polisario answered with a declaration of war, shooting artillery shells onto Moroccan fortifications on the occupied territory. For the following weeks, the Sahrawi army has continued in its strategy of shelling Moroccan positions along the Berm. The Moroccan military attempted to stop attacks with its own artillery and aircraft, but the mobile Sahrawi troops have so far evaded most bombings.
The Polisario’s armed forces are gravely outnumbered and outgunned by the Moroccans. It is estimated 200,000 Sahrawis live in the liberated areas of Western Sahara and in refugee camps in Algeria. Meanwhile, the Royal Moroccan Armed Forces have up to 100,000 military personnel deployed across the occupied Western Sahara. Technologically, the Sahrawis have to rely mostly on Soviet equipment, whereas the Moroccans have the latest US and European arms and training at their disposal. Morocco is also one of the principal recipients of international aid from imperialist countries, for its military strategic role and for violently deterring migrants from making the journey from Western Africa to Europe, on behalf of the EU.
The Polisario doesn’t have the capacity to win a military victory, at least on open ground, and the Moroccan state is content with controlling the economically and strategically significant parts of the Western Sahara. Furthermore, King Mohammed VI would rather have silence to cover up the brutal, illegal occupation than attempt to take over the whole territory.
Polisario’s hope is that international solidarity movements from around the world will stand with them, as the Western Sahara gets back on the news. The Sahrawis on occupied territory have also continued protesting since November, facing brutal repression from Moroccan security forces. Many African governments and peoples have expressed their support for Sahrawi self-determination, especially in Southern Africa, where colonialism and apartheid were especially brutal, and ended relatively recently. In the Spanish state, the former coloniser of the territory, thousands of protesters came out to support the Sahrawis in November and December 2020. Anti-imperialists from around the world must stand with the Sahrawi cause for national liberation, as Morocco’s monarchy becomes ever more confident and open in its alliance with imperialism and Zionist occupation.
Elias Haddad
