Palestinians have strongly condemned an agreement that lays the foundation for security cooperation, intelligence sharing, and future arms sales between Israel and Morocco, with neighboring Algeria blasting the deal and calling Rabat’s threats “unprecedented and disgraceful”.
“The agreement between Morocco and Israel will jeopardize regional security, and will give the occupying regime the opportunity to escalate their attacks against the Palestinian nation, and to infringe upon the security of African people,” Sami Abu Zuhri, a spokesman for Hamas resistance movement, wrote in a post published on his Twitter page on Friday.
He called on Moroccan authorities to reverse the dangerous move.
Morocco and Israel signed the “security cooperation agreement” on Wednesday during a ceremony attended by Israeli minister of military affairs Benny Gantz and Moroccan Defense Minister Abdellatif Loudiyi in Rabat.
Hamas condemned Gantz’s Morocco trip, saying in a statement that, “Normalizing ties with the occupation is a stab in the back of the Palestinian people that encourages it to go ahead with crimes and violations against Palestinians.”
The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Executive Committee also denounced formalization of security cooperation between the North African state and the Tel Aviv regime.
“We hoped that the Kingdom of Morocco, which chairs the al-Quds Committee, would not take this dangerous step in light of the racist measures practiced by Israel against Palestinian people, its disregard of all peace agreements, its rejection of negotiations and the [so-called] two-state solution, and its imposition of a fait accompli policy,” it said in a statement.
The statement highlighted that Israel’s “continued illegal settlement expansion policy, forced displacement of occupied al-Quds residents, gradual annexation of Palestinian lands, and prejudice against the Arab and Islamic identity of al-Quds and its sanctities” were reasons why Morocco should not have signed the agreement.
“This agreement constitutes a departure from what has been stipulated in the Arab League summits, the Arab consensus, and the Arab Peace Initiative,” the PLO Executive Committee pointed out, adding that the agreement is “harmful to the security and interests of Arab nations.”
It also urged Morocco to cancel the agreement, emphasizing that any departure by an Arab country from the Arab Peace Initiative is unacceptable and offers a reward to the Israeli regime.
The so-called Arab Peace Initiative, which was proposed by Saudi Arabia, calls on Israel to agree to a Palestinian state along the 1967 lines and a “just” solution to the Palestinian refugee issue.
