Mustafa Fetouri
Middle East Monitor / July 18, 2024
News reports have it that Morocco has signed a $1 billion to buy an Israeli spy satellite to replace its two old satellites built by the joint European-owned Airbus and the French-owned Thales satellites. This latest deal has been shrouded in secrecy because it concerns building a spy satellite by Israel’s Airspace Industries (IAI). Neither Rabat nor Tel Aviv is giving away much about the deal and how it will be financed nor, most importantly, why Rabat needs such an expensive piece of equipment built specifically for spying purposes. Above all, why buy from IAI, when Israel is carrying out daily atrocities in the Palestinian Territories by using the same company’s products, including drones?
The Moroccan-Israeli military ties have seen major leaps in recent years as part of both sides’ desire to further normalize their overall relations, despite the protests against the Israeli military activities in North Africa particularly coming from Algeria, Morocco’s Western neighbour and regional arch- rival.
In May this year, Rabat also signed another deal with Israel’s BlueBird Aero Systems— drones manufacturer, partly owned by IAI. While neither the Moroccan Defence Ministry nor BlueBird commented on the deal, it is reported that it will see Morocco produce its own military drones in the near future. The deal will propel Morocco into the club of African countries producing drones, alongside Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa.
However, regionally, the Moroccan drone production, whenever it starts, will further infuriate Algeria which has been locked with the Kingdom in a decades’ long dispute over Western Sahara which Rabat claims, while Algeria supports the desert enclave’s independence.
Algeria has, in the past, reacted angrily to the Israeli presence in North Africa, viewing it within its larger long-standing strategy of rejecting any foreign military presence in the region. Algeria is particularly suspicious of any Israeli activities in its neighbourhood which it, rightly, sees as a long time threat to regional security and stability. Algeria has become hypersensitive to any idea of foreign presence near its border, especially after its western neighbour, Libya, has become a battle ground between big powers since its destruction by Western countries in 2011.
Algeria consistently maintains the same policy of rejecting foreign interference throughout. For example, last August, it denied a French request for its military airplanes to fly over its airspace on their way to Niger, which shares Algeria’s long southern borders. France asked for permission after the military takeover in Niger, in July 2023, which embroiled Paris in a deep military and diplomatic crisis with Niger, eventually forcing Paris to withdraw its 1,500 troops and ambassador as well.
Algeria is also sensitive about its own internal and external security. Furthermore, Algeria believes Morocco is being used as an Israeli proxy to punish it for its overwhelming support for the Palestinians. Its official and public support for Palestine has never been more solid than it is now after the Israeli genocide war on Gaza, where Israel heavily uses drones made by the same very company that is about to start producing them in Morocco.
The Moroccan people, likewise, are no different when it comes to supporting Palestinians. Since their government embarked on normalizing ties with Israel, back in 2021, as part of the Abraham Accords, the majority of Moroccans have repeatedly expressed their resentment and rejection of the overall policy of ties with Israel.
Yet, the Rabat government is not deterred as it deepens and widens its cooperation with the Occupation state. In July 2023, Israel appointed its first military attaché, Colonel Sharon Itach, of Moroccan origin, to Rabat. Before that, it also paid $540 million for IAI’s Barak MX air defence system, to which Algeria reacted angrily.
The biggest incentive for Rabat’s widening rapprochement with Tel Aviv is the fact that the latter, in July of last year, recognized its sovereignty over the Western Sahara. The move, encouraged by then President Donald Trump, was a reward to Morocco for joining the Abraham Accords, which saw three other Arab countries normalize ties with apartheid Israel.
Ironically enough, the King of Morocco, Mohammed VI, as he likes to be called, is also the Chairman of the Al-Quds Committee, set up by the Organization of Islamic Conference (now called Organization of Islamic Cooperation) in 1975 with one goal: protect Al-Quds as Palestinian land and a holy Muslim shrine.
To actually sign a $1 billion deal with IAI, whose drones make the bulk of Israel’s drone capabilities being used to obliterate Gaza, is serious misjudgment and violation of everything that the Al-Quds Committee stands for. The same IAI drones are also used to target Palestinians children and activists in the West Bank.
Indeed, the Al-Quds Committee, through its charity arms, has been sending food and medical supplies to Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem but this does not make Morocco any different from, for example, the United States—the US also sends aid to Gaza, but sends more bombs to Israel to kill Palestinian civilians, prevents that aid from being delivered and destroys much of it. If the US is complacent in the genocide in Gaza, so is Morocco, whose King proudly calls himself Amir Al-Mu’minin.
In this context, the satellite deal amounts to financial support from an Arab-Muslim country to the Occupation state while it conducts the worst massacre of civilians in the 21 century. Many countries around the world have been suspending any form or military cooperation with Israel, while Morocco is doing the opposite.
One wonders, also, about the enemy Rabat is creating for itself by further antagonizing its neighbour, Algeria, which is extremely furious about the increasing Israeli activities in the area. Normally, tensions in Algerian-Moroccan ties, which have been part of the geopolitics of the region, cool off after a while. With the Israeli involvement, it is very unlikely that the same will happen even decades from now. In fact, pessimistic regional observers think North Africa will be lucky if some sort of military clash between the two is avoided in the near future.
Mustafa Fetouri is a Libyan academic and freelance journalist
