As they headed on Dec. 22 to Rabat for the official signing of the Israel-Morocco normalization agreement, talk among the Israeli and American passengers on the first ever direct commercial flight from Tel Aviv to the Moroccan capital was about “the fifth state.” The agreement between Israel and Morocco is the fourth target in the peace and normalization blitz launched earlier this year by President Donald Trump. Trump’s team, led by his top adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner, the director of Israel’s National Security Council, Meir Ben-Shabbat, and his team and Foreign Ministry Director General Alon Ushpiz dedicated most of the 5½-half hour flight to ongoing efforts to rope a fifth Islamic state into the normalization campaign before Trump leaves office. They may not make it, but at least they will have tried. “The less we talk about a fifth state, the better the chances of it happening,” Ushpiz told Al-Monitor.
For Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Morocco is the jewel in the crown. With all due respect to the Gulf principalities and the recent agreements they have forged with Israel, hundreds of thousands of Israelis of Moroccan ancestry make up an enormous electoral pool. Netanyahu believes that many of them are part of his political base.
News of the agreement with Morocco is hardly dramatic. The two states established diplomatic ties in 1994, following the Israeli-Palestinian Oslo Accords. King Hassan and then his son, King Mohammed VI, almost routinely hosted Israeli prime ministers. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and former Prime Minister (late President) Shimon Peres took part in Hassan’s 1999 funeral. The second intifada that erupted the following year cut short the official six-year romance, with Morocco recalling its representatives from Israel, but the relationship continued. Tens of thousands of Israelis visit Morocco annually, security and intelligence officials on both sides are well acquainted, commercial and business ties are conducted and cultural exchanges flourish.
The normalization agreement brought these clandestine ties into the open and provided them with an official stamp of approval. Israelis will now be able to fly directly to Morocco (rather than through Europe) and visa procedures will be simplified greatly. The timing for Netanyahu could not have been better, coming as it does just as he plunges Israel into a fourth election in less than two years. It is scheduled for March 23.
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