The national company Royal Air Maroc (RAM) announced Tuesday, November 9 the launch of an air link connecting the economic capital Casablanca to Tel Aviv, the first direct line to Israel, ten months after the normalization of relations between the two countries.
This new link will be operational from December 12, RAM said in a statement. She “Meets the expectations of the Moroccan community established in Israel which maintains strong links with its country of origin”.
“It also aims to allow tourists, as well as businesswomen and men, to go to Morocco or Israel”, is it added in the press release relayed by the MAP press agency. The Moroccan company will offer three flights per week, before moving ” in a short time “ at five.
The announcement comes three months after the launch of commercial flights from Israel to Morocco, followed shortly after in August by the first official visit of Israeli foreign minister Yair Lapid to the Sharifian kingdom.
A community of some 3,000 people
Morocco is the fourth Arab country to have announced in 2020 the normalization of its relations with Israel – after the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan – in return for an American recognition of its “Sovereignty” on the former Spanish colony of Western Sahara.
Morocco’s Jewish community, present since Antiquity, is the largest in North Africa (some 3,000 people). And nearly 700,000 Israelis of Moroccan descent have often kept very strong ties with their country of origin.
Before the coronavirus pandemic, the 50,000 to 70,000 tourists who came each year from Israel, many from Morocco, had to transit through other countries.
Morocco and Israel maintained official relations from 1993 to 2000, when the second intifada broke out in the Palestinian territories against the Israeli occupation.
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