"A mistake." This is how Hassan Kaabia, the Israeli Foreign Ministry's spokesperson for Arab media justified Benjamin Netanyahu's presentation, during his interview on French channel LCI on Thursday, May 30, of a map of Morocco without the Western Sahara, "a non-autonomous territory," according to the United Nations, but which Rabat considers to be under its sovereignty.
Faced with the outcry in the Moroccan press and on social media, the Ministry's spokesman for Arab media engaged in an unusual exercise in contrition. On the social media network X, Kaabia addressed King Mohammed VI directly: "We apologize for this technical error."
During his interview, Netanyahu cited Morocco as "one of the many countries in the Arab world" with which Israel "has made peace," in reference to the Abraham Accords and the official resumption of relations between Rabat and Tel Aviv in December 2020. In support of his argument, the Israeli prime minister held up a map showing the Cherifian empire in green and the Western Sahara in white.
Moroccan critics were quick to respond. The news site Médias24 described the gesture as an "indecent act." “Should this map be seen as a provocation?” asked the magazine Telquel, while the Istiqlal party daily L'Opinion condemned it as "an attack on Morocco following its condemnation of aggression against Palestine."
Rabat, which still refuses to ratify the Rome Statute establishing the International Criminal Court, has not reacted publicly to the request of its attorney general, who on May 20 asked for arrest warrants to be issued for Netanyahu and his defense minister. Moroccan diplomacy did, however, welcome the decision of the International Court of Justice, which on January 26 enjoined Israel to take "all measures within its power to prevent and punish direct and public incitement to commit genocide."
In July 2023, in a letter addressed to King Mohammed VI, the Israeli prime minister recognized Morocco's sovereignty over the Western Sahara. But the first hiccup came in October, when a photograph of his office showed a map of Morocco "without its Sahara," according to Moroccan newspapers.
At the time Netanyahu's office said that it was an "old" map and that it was being replaced. Israeli diplomacy had already been forced to explain itself publicly, which makes its embarrassment, since Thursday evening, after this second blunder, all the more obvious.
"Netanyahu immediately realized that the map was wrong and that it did not correspond to the official maps used by the Israeli government," said Asher Fredman, Israeli director of the Abraham Accords Peace Institute, the body responsible for assessing the progress of normalization treaties between the Jewish state and Arab countries.
Unintentional as it may be, Netanyahu's mistake comes at a time when observers of the bilateral relationship are pointing to the "crumbling" of normalization between Morocco and Israel. The number of weak signals has been increasing since the Hamas attack on October 7 and the siege of Gaza by the Israeli army.
Parliamentary diplomacy is at a standstill, government meetings have ceased and direct flights between the two countries remain suspended. As for the prospect of an Israeli consulate in Dakhla, one of the main towns in Western Sahara, which Netanyahu had said he would "positively" consider opening in the summer of 2023, it has never seemed so distant.
Nevertheless, economic exchanges are continuing, this time without publicity, as is military cooperation, which is at the heart of the rapprochement between Rabat and Tel Aviv. On this point, the two capitals converge in their analysis of the situation in Western Sahara. "Moroccan sovereignty [over this territory] is a matter of security for both Israel and Morocco. We must repel the destabilizing activities of the Polisario Front, which is armed and financed by Iran," said David Aaronson, deputy director of the Abraham Accords Peace Institute.
Rabat, which believes that the Sahrawi independence fighters are supported by Tehran and participate in the actions of terrorist groups in the Sahel, recently pointed to their links with Russian mercenaries based in West Africa. A week ago, the Moroccan press reported that some 500 young people from the Saharan camps near Tindouf had been recruited into the paramilitary force set up by Moscow in Mali.
Translation of an original article published in French on lemonde.fr; the publisher may only be liable for the French version.