Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi welcomed on Feb. 9 a senior Moroccan delegation that arrived in Israel to reopen the country’s liaison office. Moroccan diplomat Abderrahim Beyyoud will head the Tel Aviv bureau. In parallel, David Govrin, who heads Israel’s liaison office in Rabat, met today for the first time with Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita. Morocco's King Mohammed VI had already indicated that the opening of mutual embassies was near.
Still, Israel-Morocco relations are not just a matter of diplomacy and diplomats. On Feb. 8, Israel's Minister of Public Security Amir Ohana spoke over the phone with his Moroccan counterpart, Interior Minister Abdelouafi Laftit, in a conversation that was reportedly especially warm and friendly. At the beginning of the conversation, Ohana greeted Laftit in Moroccan Arabic, noting that as a son of Moroccan immigrants, reestablishing bilateral ties is of special significance for him. He had waited many years for this to happen, he said. The two ministers then invited each other to visit their home countries in order to promote cooperation in the field of public security. They agreed to meet in the near future either in Morocco or Israel.
Ohana was certainly not the first Israeli minister to speak on the phone with his Moroccan counterpart. He was not even the first Israeli minister of Moroccan origins to do so. On Jan. 18, Interior Minister Aryeh Deri — who was born in Morocco — spoke on the phone with Laftit. "I have spoken this morning with my colleague, Moroccan Interior Minister Abdelouafi Laftit. We decided to establish a joint team to study the possibility of bringing [Moroccan] foreign workers [to Israel] for the nursing sector and to consider visa exemption. Apart from that, I shared with him memories from my hometown Meknes in Morocco. We exchanged invitations for visits in Israel and Morocco," tweeted Deri.
As a reminder, Israel and Morocco reestablished diplomatic ties on Dec. 10. The agreement was part of a US-brokered deal that includes American recognition of Morocco’s sovereignty over the long-disputed Western Sahara region. In recent years, Rabat had accelerated its diplomatic campaign on this issue. Clearly, the king felt it was a last-minute opportunity to generate a Washington change of policy on that, before the presidential elections.
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