RABAT (Dispatches) – Anger is mounting in Morocco over the North African country’s normalization of ties with the Zionist regime.
Demonstrators on Monday took to the streets in several cities across Morocco to protest Rabat’s normalization of ties with the occupying regime and recent military agreements signed between the two sides.
Moroccans, including activists and ordinary people, took part in large-scale protests in the cities of Oujda, Berkane, Ben Slimane, Beni-Mellal and Oulad Teima.
The demonstrators chanted anti-Zionist slogans, calling for an end to normalization of relations between Rabat and Tel Aviv and voicing their support for the Palestinian cause.
The police, however, foiled a similar protest by pro-Palestinian groups in the capital Rabat, using brute force, according to reports.
The demonstrations protested under the banner of “The Moroccan Front to Support Palestine and against Normalization”, denouncing recent bonhomie between the Zionist regime and Morocco.
They also condemned the visit of Zionist war minister Benjamin Gantz to Morocco and rejected any collaboration with “the enemies of the Palestinian people.”
The pro-Palestine demonstrators said any cooperation with the regime constitutes a threat to Morocco and the whole region.
Gantz visited Rabat last week, his first visit to one of the Arab states that normalized ties last year, during which the two sides signed a military agreement and a pact that would see the occupying regime sell drones and weapons to Morocco.
The Palestinian resistance movement, Hamas, called it “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, wrote in a Twitter post.
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.
Morocco, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan signed agreements to normalize relations with Tel Aviv in 2020 as part of the so-called Abraham Accords, brokered by the previous U.S. administration.