Israel's first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion once said that Israel's fate rests on the state being both strong and right. Well, for the European Union, it appears that being right is enough. An ostensibly minor legal-economic tiff that recently emerged between the EU and Morocco is turning out to be a microcosm, representing the EU's problems with the entire world, and even with itself.
The minor issue revolves around a fishing agreement between the EU and Morocco, which is set to expire this coming July. European Court of Justice Advocate General Melchior Wathelet, a Belgian politician who once served as a judge at the same court, has complied with a British request to review the agreement on the grounds that the existing agreement violates the human rights of the residents of Western Sahara, and is therefore illegal.
On Tuesday this week, the court will hear the arguments and consider Wathelet's position as well as opposing arguments by EU legal experts, who claim that Wathelet's assertion overlooks European interests.
But this is precisely the story of Europe, where the code term "human rights" always outweighs the interests of the Europeans themselves, without anyone taking the trouble to study the details.
In this instance, the story revolves around the organization named the Polisario Front, from the Spanish abbreviation for Frente Popular de Liberacion de Saguia el Hamra y Rio de Oro, a Sahrawi rebel movement seeking to end the Moroccan presence in Western Sahara. The group was first founded in the 1970s when Spain fully withdrew from Western Sahara and left it in Moroccan hands. Neighboring Algeria claimed ownership over the area, as did Mauritania.
The Sahara desert is the largest desert in the world. It passes through 11 North African countries and stretches over more than 9 million square kilometers (3.5 million square miles). But this enormous territory is home to fewer than 2.5 million inhabitants.
When Spain left the Western Sahara, there were no more than 800 people living there. After the inhabitants of the Sahara, with the help of foreign funding, began organizing guerrilla warfare against Morocco and eliciting violent retaliation, many of those inhabitants fled to Algeria, where they were welcomed with open arms. Algeria introduced them to other residents of the Sahara and funded their resistance efforts against Morocco on all fronts, but particularly on the diplomatic front.
The Polisario Front maintains a presence in the U.K., too. When the original fishing agreement between Morocco and the EU was signed, the U.K. was still a part of the EU. So the Polisario Front representatives in the U.K. demanded that the EU pull out of the agreement. The U.K., which, until then, had no particular stance on the matter, approached the EU and asked that the Polisario Front's arguments be reviewed. The request was met with great interest by that very same advocate general, who, in the past, ruled against an agricultural agreement for similar reasons, and is not trying to sabotage the renewal of the agreement between the EU and Morocco.
The European constitution allows the courts in every EU member state to review cases that impact the entire union. Therefore, it is rather easy for human rights groups to find the one judge who will be sympathetic to their cause and file their suit in that judge's court. In this instance, the agreement applies to fishermen from 11 EU states, including Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, Germany and Holland. The European fishermen bring in 83 tons of fish annually and earn some 80 million euros. On the other hand, in Morocco, fishing comprises 2% of the gross national product and accounts for about 9% of Morocco's exports.
Moroccan sources in Belgium told Israel Hayom last week that "this agreement will not hurt our economy. Our fishermen will continue to fish without it. If it does any harm at all, the harm will be negligible. The thing that does concern us, however, is the fact that this organization was able to gain so much sway in international forums."
A report commissioned by the EU on the issue reveals that the fishing agreement between the two countries has been implemented successfully so far. Thus, for example, between 2014 and 2016, 1,000 new jobs were created as a result of this agreement. The report further concludes that the agreement is "worthwhile for the EU and yields a return on the investment in it." Keep in mind that on the other side of this dispute is an organization representing a tiny minority seeking an independent state. It's absurd, because numerically, culturally and historically these people were never a nation, and this tiny minority would have no basis to claim autonomy as an independent entity if it weren't for its benefactor – a country with territorial claims that are apparently not strong enough to claim it for themselves.
Professor Michael Ben Saadon, a historian who specializes in Moroccan culture, told Israel Hayom that Israel was warned in the past not to compare the EU's relationship with Polisario to its own relationship with the Palestinians.
My source in Belgium also spoke about this parallel, saying that "Israel needs to understand that a ruling in favor of Polisario on such a marginal issue, if one should be made, heaven forbid, will be harmful to Israel too. Political issues that were never decided and never fully investigated could become a bigger priority even than Europe's immediate interests."
In fact, today, Europe is held captive by its own organizational construct, in a way that harms the EU every day, the source explained.
Israel Hayom Editor-in-Chief and former Israeli Ambassador to Mauritania Boaz Bismuth is closely familiar with this issue. "The Western Sahara is important to Morocco almost like Jerusalem is important to Israel," he says. "For most people, it is nothing more than a sweltering pile of sand. But for Morocco, it is an integral part of the country. In the past, Mauritania also had some territorial claims to the region, but it dropped them, as did Algeria."
But behind the scenes, the war is still ongoing. Now, through Polisario. Even Bismuth draws a parallel between this guerilla group and the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians. The Palestinians, too, exist mainly to satisfy the interests of foreign players.
Israel knows all about this dispute and is likely monitoring the events closely as they unfold. I ask my Moroccan source whether Morocco expects Israel's support in this matter. It seems that in this particular instance, Israel has no help to offer, but it will certainly be affected by the outcome. But it is interesting to note that the Moroccan king reportedly views himself as a bridge linking the Arab world and Israel and, generally speaking, the Arab world and the West.
Morocco is known for its extremely free market, when compared to other Arab states. On the World Bank's Doing Business index, which ranks economies on their ease of doing business, Morocco ranks not much lower than Israel, and in a number of parameters it even outperforms Israel. In the overall ranking, Israel places at number 54 and Morocco at number 69 in the world. This is a tiny gap considering the difference between the two countries' gross national product (Morocco's $9,000 GNP per capita is about a quarter of Israel's).
Real estate is one of the hot-button topics in the Israeli economy in recent years. Well, according to the same World Bank index, it turns out that it is much easier and safer to make real estate deals in Morocco than it is in Israel. Israel's building permit bureaucracy knocks it down to the 65th spot in the world, while Morocco boasts an enviable No. 17. In everything having to do with real estate records, Israel is ranked all the way down at number 130, while Morocco is at 86. In enforcing contracts, Israel is ranked 94th in the world, and Morocco is 57th.
