ISRAEL and Morocco announced they are to ‘normalise ties’ in another US-brokered deal.
On Thursday, Morocco became the fourth Arab country since August to strike a deal ‘normalising relations with Israel’. The others are the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan.
As part of the agreement, US President Donald Trump agreed to recognise Morocco’s sovereignty over the Western Sahara, where there has been a decades-old territorial dispute with Morocco pitted against the Algeria-backed Polisario Front, a breakaway movement that seeks to establish an independent state in the territory.
The Moroccan ruling class has stabbed the Palestinians in the back!
Bassam as-Salhi, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organisation Executive Committee, condemned the deal. He said: ‘Any Arab retreat from the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, which stipulates that normalisation comes only after Israel ends its occupation of Palestinian and Arab lands, is unacceptable and increases Israel’s belligerence and its denial of the Palestinian people’s rights.’
In Gaza, Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said: ‘This is a sin and it doesn’t serve the Palestinian people. The Israeli occupation uses every new normalisation to increase its aggression against the Palestinian people and increase its settlement expansion.’
Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, an adviser to Iran’s parliamentary speaker, said yesterday that Morocco’s normalisation of relations with Israel was a ‘betrayal’.
Previously, Iran also condemned Bahrain and the UAE in their decision to ‘normalise relations’ with Israel. This is something the Arab League would not do. It refused to condemn the normalisation deals. The Egyptian rulers and Oman went a step further – they welcomed the Israel-Morocco-US deal.
There is an ongoing campaign to establish pro-Israel ‘facts on the ground’, before US president Trump leaves the scene. The incoming President Biden will then be able to say that he is confronted with ‘facts’ that are too difficult to erase. In fact, Biden is a committed supporter of Israel.
Meanwhile, 138 of the 193 United Nations (UN) member states and two non-member states have recognised Palestine as a state.
The UN does not recognise Trump’s proclamation with regard to Morocco. The UN said its position on the disputed Western Sahara region was ‘unchanged’. Spanish Foreign Minister Arancha Gonzalez Laya has welcomed the Israel-Morocco-US deal.
Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh yesterday called on Spain to recognise the State of Palestine.
His statement came as Gonzalez Laya visited Shtayyeh’s office in Ramallah, where they discussed Spain’s ‘potential role in reviving the political peace process’.
Shtayyeh said: ‘For the Palestinian side, any political path must aim to end the Israeli occupation and establish a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders,’ as he called for the ‘formation of an international coalition to end the occupation and recognise the State of Palestine’.
The real friends and allies of the Palestinian people are not the capitalist ruling classes of the planet.
Like Gonzalez Laya, they have a foot in both camps. They manage to ‘support’ the Palestinian people verbally while at the same time they support Morocco embracing Israel. In fact, these deals are not only a direct attack on Palestine, but on Syria and Iran too.
Any nation that ‘normalises relations’ with Israel is giving the Zionists the green light to steal more Palestinian land, to arrest, maim and kill more Palestinians, to continue the occupation of Syria’s Golan Heights, and to step up the Israeli war against Iran.
The US and Israel will now be moving hell and high water to bring Saudi Arabia openly into the fold. The reality is that the recognition deals are part of a deadly plot against the Palestinian masses.
However, the people of Sudan, Morocco, UAE and Bahrain support Palestine. The best way they can advance the Palestinians’ struggle now is to rise up and overthrow their rulers.
In this huge struggle, the US and UK working classes have a massive role to play, not just to prevent imperialist intervention, but to bring down the ruling classes of the US and the UK, so that they can go forward to socialism, and by that action greatly assist the national liberation of all of the oppressed nations, especially the Palestinian nation.
US and UK workers must take action now to support Palestine! There is not a moment to lose!