If all goes well, Israeli flag carrier El Al will make its first direct flight from Tel Aviv to Rabat, Morocco, this afternoon.
Exactly 43 years separate this momentous flight the first direct flight from Ben-Gurion International Airport to Cairo. In 1977, Egyptian President Anwar was the first Arab leader to break the boycott the Arab world had imposed on Israel. King Muhammad VI of Morocco, whose father was a partner to the peace talks between Israel and Egypt, is now walking in an expanding path to peace, as well.
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Egypt may have been the first Arab country to emerge from the circle of hostility with Israel, but peace between Jerusalem and Cairo has been and remains cold.
The upheavals in the Middle East over the past decade, the collapse of Arab nationalism and the emerging Iranian threat have led the moderate Arab regimes to see Israel as a legitimate partner and even as a strategic ally; and peace with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain has been warm from day one.
Israel and Morocco have maintained warm albeit low-profile ties for years. Jerusalem and Rabat have fostered close political, strategic, security, intelligence, trade and tourism ties. Israeli officials have visited Morocco and the ties between the Jewish community in Morocco and their Israeli brethren have flourished.
There is good reason to assume that with the announcement of official normalizing with Israel, ties with Morocco will only grow warmer.
Rabat has high hopes for what the normalization and the establishment of direct flights can do for its tourism industry, which has been severely crippled by the global pandemic. Last year, close to 50,000 Israelis visited morocco. That number is now expected to quadruple.
Morocco wants to present itself as a safe tourist destination, but like the rest of the world, it still faces high corona morbidity. Authorities there will soon begin a large-scale vaccination campaign based, at least in the first phase, on the Chinese vaccine.
It is worth noting that at this time, Morocco and Israel have yet to discuss the issue of opening embassies – only interest offices, perhaps out of a desire to see if US President-elect Joe Biden will abide by US President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Morocco's sovereignty over Western Sahara – the boon offered to King Muhammad VI for the rapprochement with Israel.
Morocco is the fourth Arab country to establish diplomatic relations with Israel, following the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan. We must credit senior White House adviser Jared Kushner and his team for being able, in a short period of to outline a new map of interests and cooperation in the Middle East, with Israel at its center. They deserve the credit, even if they don't have the time to bring Saudi Arabia and Oman into the Abraham Accords.
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