RABAT, June 23 (Reuters) –
Morocco announced on Friday the postponement until after the summer of a summit of the signatory countries of the “Abraham Accords”, which aim to normalize ties between Israel and the Arab countries, while the West Bank is in the grip of violence unheard of for several years.
This decision comes after an Israeli raid on Jenin which claimed the lives of five Palestinians on Monday and the decision of the Jewish state to establish 1,000 new housing units in a Jewish colony.
Nasser Bourita, Morocco’s foreign minister, said the postponement was partly due to scheduling issues, but also to Israel’s “provocative and unilateral actions” which he said are undermining peace efforts in the region.
The head of Moroccan diplomacy condemned the operation in Jenin as well as the green light given to the expansion of the settlement of Eli, in the occupied West Bank.
Israel justified its raid in Jenin by arresting two Palestinians suspected of armed attacks and presented its decision to build 1,000 new housing units as a response to a shooting that claimed the lives of four Israelis on Tuesday.
Morocco, which officially supports the two-state solution as a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is one of the four Arab countries which signed the “Abraham Accords” in 2020, under the aegis of the United States. The other three are the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan.
Rabat has strengthened its ties with the Jewish state in exchange for the recognition by the United States of its sovereignty over Western Sahara, claimed by the Polisario Front.
Israel hosted in March 2022 the Foreign Ministers of the Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Egypt, in peace with Israel since 1979, as well as the American Secretary of State Antony Blinken, for a first “Negev summit “.
In January, the head of Israeli diplomacy Eli Cohen announced that Morocco would in turn host a meeting in March 2023, which never materialized. Since then, Eli Cohen has repeatedly said he expects the event to occur “within the next few weeks”.
Asked about these delays, an adviser to the minister cited problems with scheduling coordination between the various participants.
Morocco, like the other Arab countries that signed the Abraham Accords, has become an important defense partner for Israel.
Yair Kulas, an export official at Israel’s Defense Ministry, told Israeli Kan Radio on Thursday that the deals had not been affected by tensions over Benjamin Netanyahu’s government’s policy of bringing together the right and far right. (Report Ahmed El Jechtimi, Dan Williams, French version Jean-Stéphane Brosse, edited by Kate Entringer)
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