Tens of thousands attend anti-Israel demonstration in Morocco
Palestinian-flag bearing protestors in Casablanca call for Rabat to suspend ties with Israel, demand permanent ceasefire
CASABLANCA, Morocco — Tens of thousands of Moroccans took to the streets Sunday in the country’s commercial capital Casablanca, in an anti-Israel protest that called for a permanent ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and the suspension of diplomatic ties with the Jewish state.
The fledgling rapprochement between the North African country and Israel had made steady progress since 2020 when the two governments normalized relations, but that has been thrown into reverse by the deadly Israel-Hamas conflict.
Morocco, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain all established diplomatic ties with Israel under the Abraham Accords in 2020, which were negotiated under the administration of former US president Donald Trump.
On Sunday, demonstrators in Casablanca waved Palestinian flags and demanded that Rabat suspend ties with Israel.
“It is not a truce that we need, but a permanent ceasefire” to give a chance “for peace, for the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state, with its capital in Jerusalem,” socialist MP Nabila Mounib said on Sunday.
She said she hoped to see “the return of all those exiled in the Palestinian diaspora” and the release of Palestinian security prisoners.
Hassan Bahadou of the anti-normalization alliance of leftist parties and Islamists that organized the protest said: “We also condemn the silence of negligent Arab regimes allied with the Zionist entity.”
Pro-Palestinian demonstrations had declined in recent years in Morocco, but have surged since the Israel-Hamas war broke out.
Moroccan cardiologist Safae Abderazzak said she was demonstrating “to condemn the Israeli aggression against our Palestinian brothers and against our fellow doctors who are being tortured and martyred in Gaza.”
A four-day truce came into effect on Friday in Gaza, seven weeks after the outbreak of war between Hamas and Israel, sparked by an unprecedented assault by the Palestinian Islamist terror movement on October 7.
The Hamas rampage into southern Israel killed at least 1,200 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli officials, and destroyed whole communities. Another 240 people, including many women, children, and elderly, were taken into Gaza as hostages.
In reaction, Israel declared war, mobilized the IDF and began an air and ground assault into Gaza. The Hamas-run health ministry says that nearly 15,000 people have been killed in the territory since October 7, but that number could not be independently verified and likely includes Hamas fighters and civilians killed by misfired Palestinian rockets.
