StorySince the end of December, Israel and Morocco have reestablished their diplomatic relations. This rapprochement is the culmination of a long behind-the-scenes work of the small Moroccan Jewish community to reconcile a double millennial identity.
This evening of December 22, 2020, at the royal palace in Rabat, the slender figure of Jared Kushner, the son-in-law and adviser of Donald Trump, did not receive the usual attention of photographers. All eyes were on a short, somewhat cramped 54-year-old man standing right behind him: Meir Ben-Shabbat, Israeli national security adviser, who came from Tel Aviv with the US delegation to inaugurate the official takeover. relations between Morocco and Israel, after twenty years of diplomatic quarrel.
Benyamin Netanyahu’s emissary bowed to King Mohammed VI, hand on heart, kippah on his head, before releasing: “Long live my sovereign. “ Under the astonished looks of the small audience, he pronounced the formula in a darija (Moroccan dialectal Arabic) usually reserved for followers of a rigorous royal protocol, hermetic to Westerners. “The Americans just stood there, not understanding what was going on. Ben-Shabbat’s address traced back two thousand years of Judeo-Moroccan heritage, the stakes of which go beyond Trump’s peace plan in the Middle East ”, says a relative of the royal circle.
Decades of fierce negotiations
Twelve days earlier, the Cherifian kingdom had announced the resumption of relations with Israel, in exchange for the recognition by the United States of the sovereignty of Morocco over Western Sahara and in the wake of the normalization of ties with the Hebrew state. undertaken by United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan. “But Morocco is neither a petromonarchy under pressure, nor a state at bay. Our reconciliation is based on a true story, which is not prefabricated ”, we hammer in Rabat.
For Moroccan officials, this decision is the consecration of several decades of fierce negotiations behind the scenes and attempts to rehabilitate the Judeo-Moroccan memory that recent history has almost wiped out. Although relations with the Jewish state never truly ceased, the kingdom closed its liaison offices in Tel Aviv after the second Intifada in 2000. “Morocco has always maintained a certain ambiguity by never completely cutting ties with Israel, while defending the Palestinian cause. It is on this community, on this strong history, that everything rests ”, whispered a witness.
Addressing the ruler in Darija, Meir Ben-Shabbat, whose parents were born in Morocco, sent a strong message to more than a million Jews of Moroccan origin living today mainly in Israel, but also in Europe, the United States and Canada, and who remain deeply attached to their Moroccan roots. From Ashdod to Montreal, they sang, cried, and organized parties to celebrate the long-awaited reconciliation, sometimes by videoconference with their families back in Morocco, where some 3,000 Jews still reside.
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