The Kingdom of Morocco has two great allies (the United States and Israel), two great enemies (Algeria and the Polisario) and a tradition: testing Spain at very well-chosen moments in order to verify our limits and simultaneously display power. To the tableau must be added the day chosen by Rabat for the show of force of sending 50,000 young people to a city of 83,000 inhabitants: the celebration of the ascension to the throne of Mohamed VI, whose appearance on Thursday visualized his poor health, which fosters and anticipates struggles in the Majzén, the opaque elite that forms the court and takes its name from the royal residence in Rabat.
Since the Green March of 1975, Rabat has asserted itself through stress tests from which it always, fortunately, ends up backing down. The occupation of the Perejil islet in July 2002 was a textbook example.
Israel and the U.S. hold Morocco accountable, Rabat provokes the Government that ‘gifted’ it the Sahara
And why does Morocco punish the Government of Spain? The Government that, precisely, recognized the Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara in April 2022, the greatest gift that could be offered in the name of good neighborliness? In these four years, things have happened in the world. Trump has returned after his first term (2016-2020), whose great foreign policy achievement was the Abraham Accords, in August 2020, a pragmatic plan: normalize the Middle East and reward those who recognized Israel. The Kingdom of Morocco joined the deal in exchange for Western Sahara, and by doing so solidified Trump’s initiative (since Jordan in 1994, no major Arab country had established relations with Israel). Morocco maintains a privileged historic relationship with the U.S., with which it signed a friendship treaty as early as 1786. And in Washington DC, one of the most robust pro-Morocco lobbies operates…
This crisis is not about immigration, although immigration is the best method today to influence domestic politics in Spain and the entire EU. President Sánchez visited Algeria on July 20 and restored cordial relations. And second, and perhaps more importantly: the Congress began processing on July 23 a bill from Sumar to grant nationality to all Sahrawis born before 1975 – the date of the Spanish withdrawal – a measure from which about 60,000 Sahrawis could benefit.
Read more From ecstasy to resignation in just 24 hours
It is not the same to detain a Sahrawi activist as a Sahrawi with a Spanish/EU passport. Granting this attribute to its enemies was very badly received in Rabat.
Israel is delighted with the mess in Ceuta. Its ambassador to the UN took only hours to rub Spain’s face in the lessons received, forgetting – and he knows well – that neither Ceuta nor Melilla are colonies, a status granted by the United Nations. Obviously, their location makes them vulnerable and easy targets. Tensions with Washington and Tel Aviv over the Gaza and Iran wars are now taking a toll on Sánchez, as expected. Somewhere in a drawer in Washington DC there is a red button: to recognize Moroccan sovereignty over Ceuta and Melilla. And bad enemies are the U.S. and Israel.
Morocco has good antennas in Spain. Far from uniting society around the Government, they know that the Ceuta crisis has the potential to polarize Spaniards and divide them instead of closing ranks in the face of a flagrant and unjustified provocation. Cui prodest ? Domestically, to Vox. In Europe, to the allies of Trumpism who see immigration as a demon and a vote bank. And it splits the European Union, whose lukewarm support for Spain is now a way to punish it for the regularization of 800,000 immigrants, poorly received in Brussels.
Read more The Ceuta crisis pits Sánchez against his European partners over immigration
