The jihad terror group Hamas has asked Moroccans to condemn and denounce Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz’s visit in late November to their country.
“Normalization — no matter how close — will not legitimize the occupation, which will remain our nation’s singular foe,” senior Hamas official Ismail Radwan says in a statement.
Hamas is going to be disappointed at the failure of Moroccans to comply.
It’s a little late to dissuade Morocco from strengthening its links with the Jewish state. Morocco originally joined the Abraham Accords, which commits it to normalization of ties with the Jewish State, for two reasons. First, the Americans promised, as part of the deal, to recognize Morocco’s claim to the Western Sahara, denying the separatist claims of the Algerian-backed Polisario Front. That recognition was a major geopolitical victory for Rabat. Second, and even more important, Morocco realized it had much to gain, in trade, tourism, and technology, with Israel. The trade deals have just started, and while they are not likely to rival in size the deals Israel has made with the United Arab Emirates, whose businessmen have enthusiastically embraced their Israeli counterparts and so far have signed deals worth $675 million, they are still likely to be significant. Among the first agreements signed by Morocco and Israel are those between the General Confederation of Moroccan Enterprises (CGEM), the largest corporate group in Morocco, and one of the Israel’s top technology companies IBEO, to collaborate in the areas of textiles, food industries, green technologies, and renewable energy. Much of this collaboration is likely to consist of technology transfer from Israel to Morocco.
Morocco also hopes to benefit from Israeli assistance in water management, through its advances in waste water recycling, desalination, drip irrigation, and the production of water from the ambient air (through the innovative Watergen machine) – all areas where Israel is a world leader. Solar energy is another area of likely cooperation. Morocco has deeply committed itself to solar energy. The country is home to the world’s largest concentrated solar farm. Built on an area of more than 3,000 hectares in area – the size of 3,500 football fields – the Noor-Ouarzazate complex, produces enough electricity to power a city the size of Prague, or twice the size of Marrakesh. Situated at the gateway to the Sahara Desert, the whole complex provides 580 megawatts – saving the planet from over 760,000 tons of carbon emissions. And as it happens, Israel is now the world leader in the use of solar energy per capita (3% of the primary national energy consumption) and its scientists are constantly coming up with technological advances – such as more efficient solar collectors and batteries — to make its use ever less expensive and more practical. Israeli scientists at the Technion have now come up with a revolutionary new battery, both affordable, and rechargeable, that can store solar and wind energy using a locally mined resource, bromine, that is far cheaper than the lithium that is now used in such storage batteries; its developers predict that this battery could put Israel at the forefront of the world’s renewable energy revolution in less than three years. The high cost of storage batteries has been the greatest obstacle to the expanded use of solar energy. Morocco will certainly want to benefit early on from this technological breakthrough by scientists in the Jewish state.
In tourism, the Moroccans hope, as part of its normalization of ties with Israel, to attract the nearly one million Israelis with family roots in Morocco to visit the country as tourists. Such an influx of tourists could potentially provide hundreds of millions of dollars annually to the Moroccan economy.
Then there are the defense ties. Morocco faces a continuing problem with the Algeria-backed guerrillas of the Polisario Front and a threat from Algeria itself. It has built a 1,700 mile long structure, mostly a sand wall (or “berm”), running through the Western Sahara and the southwestern portion of Morocco. It separates the Moroccan areas in the west from the Polisario-controlled areas in the east. The main function of the barriers is to exclude guerrilla fighters of the Polisario Front. But there are additional, and better, ways to keep track of the movements of Polisario guerrillas, and to keep them on the run by constantly attacking them. That way is to use UAVs — drones — as both an eye in the sky and as a weapon that can hover over a perceived enemy and then fire on him. This use of drones has already been perfected by the IDF, which no doubt would be delighted to supply the drones — the hardware, the software, and the necessary training of its operators — to their new ally, the Royal Moroccan Armed Forces, for use in the eastern Sahara against the Polisario guerrillas. In fact, though kept secret, Israel has been helping to supply the Moroccan military for several decades, ever since it first sent tanks to Rabat in the 1970s. But so far, no drones — now that will change.
Israel Defense Minister Benny Gantz has signed with his Moroccan counterpart, Abdellatif Loudiyi, the first MOU (memorandum of understanding) that Israel has made with an Arab state. This agreement formalizes the defense ties between the two countries, allowing for smoother cooperation between their defense establishments and makes it easier for Israel to sell arms to the North African kingdom.
With the signing of the MOU, the two countries’ defense ministries and militaries can more easily speak with one another and share intelligence, whereas in the past, such communication was only possible through their respective intelligence services. “In Morocco, Gantz signs Israel’s first-ever defense MOU with an Arab country,” by Judah Ari Gross, Times of Israel, November 24, 2021:
“It will allow the beginning of official security cooperation between the two [countries]. The agreement includes formalizing intelligence-sharing and will allow for ties between their defense industries, defense procurement and joint exercises,” Israel’s Defense Ministry said.
A Defense Ministry official said that while Israel maintains close security ties with Jordan and Egypt, which which it also has peace deals, it does not have memoranda of understanding with them, making the deal with Morocco “unprecedented.”
Morocco will now have access not just to information gathered by Israel’s unrivaled intelligence service, the Mossad, but also will be able to more easily acquire weapons from Israel that it needs to deal both with the Polisario guerrillas and, should relations worsen still further, with Algeria’s army.
Morocco and Israel are expected to soon sign a deal that would see the two countries co-produce kamikaze drones, according to a Moroccan military and security affairs expert with knowledge of the plans.
A Moroccan military expert, Mohammed Shkeir, told Defense News that after the MOU is signed, the two countries will also sign a contract for the sale of Israeli weapons. These will include short- and medium-range missile systems the Moroccan Army now needs to strengthen its military arsenal, as well as armored vehicles and tanks that can be used in any armed conflict that might break out with Algeria, and can also paralyze any Polisario [Front] movements along the Western Sahara wall. What is of special note is that, despite having signed a deal with Turkey just this April, for 13 Turkish Bayraktar TB2 combat drones, and taken delivery of the first batch this September, the Moroccans are still intent on a much bigger deal for Israeli drones.
The Moroccan defense analyst Mohammed Shkeir notes that “Israel has achieved a technological advance with regard to the manufacture of this type of aircraft.” In other words, Israel’s drones are superior to those of Turkey and besides, the deal with Israel allows for co-production of the drone – helping Moroccan engineers to improve their skills — whereas the Turkish drones Morocco has bought were made entirely in Turkey, with no sharing of technology.
This looks like the beginning — Casablanca is, after all, in Morocco – of a beautiful friendship.
Relic says
Hamas?
https://www.npr.org/2021/09/08/1035114359/ethel-kennedy-rfks-widow-says-sirhan-sirhan-should-not-be-released
Alfredo says
Hamas must continue to whip their brainwashed Palestians into a frenzy of anti-Semitic hatred. And the funds they collect from the useful idiots will be spent not on education, housing and hospitals; but to buy rockets.
And the next round precipitated by the raining of rockets on Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities and subsequent retaliatory response by the Sabras, which will reduce the Palestinians to rubble yet again, but regardless, Hamas will force their beholden people to perform a “Victory Parade”