Morocco's foreign minister announced on Friday that the country will be postponing a highly anticipated summit between Israel and Arab states that have signed the historic "Abraham Accords" peace agreements. The decision to delay the summit until after the summer season comes in the wake of escalating tensions in the West Bank. The move follows Israel's recent announcement to expand settlement construction in the occupied territory and a deadly Israeli raid on Jenin, resulting in the loss of five lives.
Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita said the decision was partly over scheduling but also because of "provocative and unilateral acts" that "undermine peace efforts in the region." He condemned the Israeli army raid on Jenin, in Palestine's West Bank, and rejected Israel's decision to expand settlements in occupied Palestinian territory.
Israel said its operation in Jenin was intended to arrest two Palestinians suspected of attacks. It announced the decision to build 1,000 new houses in the Eli settlement in the West Bank in response to a Palestinian gun attack nearby. Morocco is one of four Arab states alongside the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain and Sudan that moved closer to Israel in 2020 as part of a U.S.-driven diplomatic initiative.
Rabat boosted ties with Israel and agreed to move toward full diplomatic relations in return for U.S. recognition of its sovereignty over the territory of Western Sahara, which is claimed by an Algeria-backed independence movement. Morocco has said it wants to see the creation of a Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem as part of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The planned summit follows one held last year in Israel's Negev desert between Israel, Bahrain, Morocco, the UAE, the United States and Egypt, which agreed to peace with Israel in 1979. Israel had previously announced that Morocco would host the forum in March, with Foreign Minister Eli Cohen saying other countries that do not have ties with Israel might also attend. A Cohen aide has blamed the delay on the difficulty of coordinating the schedule.
Yair Lapid, a former Israeli foreign and prime minister who was an architect of the forum when in power last year, said that "failure follows failure" with the current nationalist-religious Israeli government." This is not how foreign policy should be conducted," said Lapid, who now heads the opposition.
Morocco, like other Arab countries that established ties with Israel under the Abraham Accords, has become a significant Israeli defense client. Yair Kulas, an export official in Israel's Defense Ministry, told Kan radio on Thursday that defense deals had not been impacted by tensions over Israeli government policies toward the Palestinians.