Fanny Mergui has no doubt: Moroccan Jews are already “packing their bags” to board direct flights to Israel after the kingdom normalized ties with the Jewish state.
Morocco, home to North Africa’s largest Jewish community and the homeland of some 700,000 Israelis, is also hoping for an influx of Israeli tourists when the Covid-19 pandemic eases.
“I am very happy” that the five-hour route will be served by direct flights, said Mergui, a Moroccan Jew living in Casablanca.
“This is a real revolution.”
The first direct commercial flight is in December from Tel Aviv to Rabat en route to the three-way US mediation agreement, under which Washington also recognized Moroccan sovereignty over the disputed Western Sahara.
But tickets for regular commercial flights have yet to be sold.
Bureaucratic delays are exacerbated by the pandemic, which has forced Morocco to close its borders mostly since March and impose a nationwide evening bell in December.
Singer Suzanne Harroch, who had to wait 14 hours in transit at an airport in Paris when she visited Israel, called the Israeli-Moroccan approach a ‘miracle’.
“A lot of my family lives there,” the 67-year-old said. “I can’t wait to see them more and more often.”
– Historical ties –
Israel established liaison offices in Morocco in the 1990s during a brief diplomatic opening.
But they were closed again in the early 2000s, as the second Palestinian intifada provoked a crushing Israeli response.
Yet relations continued quietly, with about $ 149 million in bilateral trade between 2014-2017, according to Moroccan news reports.
The reopening of the liaison offices could make it much easier for Moroccans to obtain visas to visit Israel.
Morocco also hopes to host more Israeli visitors.
Official statistics show that before the coronavirus pandemic, up to 70,000 Israeli tourists visited the country annually.
Most were of Moroccan descent and maintained close ties with their country of origin.
“The majority of Israelis of Moroccan descent are delighted,” said Avraham Avizemer, who left Casablanca as a toddler and has lived in Israel for decades.
The fact that their children and grandchildren can return “is great”, he said.
One Israeli who is already in Morocco is Elan.
The 34-year-old is sitting in the library of a synagogue in Casablanca, where he, along with other Israeli Jews, mostly of Moroccan origin, is receiving religious classes from a Moroccan rabbi.
“Direct flights would make the journey easier,” he said.
Morocco’s Jewish community dates back to antiquity.
It was given a boost in the 15th century by Jews expelled from Spain, reaching about 250,000 people by the late 1940s – about a tenth of the population. But this figure tumbles when many Moroccan Jews are on their way to the newly established state of Israel.
About 3,000 Jews remain in Morocco today.
– ‘Happy, optimistic’ –
Businessman George Sebat, 56, said he was “very pleased and very optimistic” about Morocco’s normalization, citing positive impacts on tourism and the economy.
Prosper Bensimon, who spoke at the Em Habanim Synagogue in Casablanca after the evening prayer, agrees.
“Four of my Muslim neighbors want to accompany me during my first visit from Morocco,” he said.
But normalization was not widely welcomed by Moroccans.
Zion Assidon, an academic and prominent left-wing activist who supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against the treatment of Israel against Palestinians, has been strongly opposed.
“The latest fad is to justify the shame of normalization by pointing to Morocco’s historical ties with Moroccan colonists,” he wrote on Facebook.
Mergui, a former Zionist youth activist, said she emigrated to Israel in the 1960s but returned to Morocco after the 1967 Six-Day War.
“I could not accept that the Jewish state, in which I believed, had to occupy Palestinian land,” she said.
She called on Israel to support “the creation of a Palestinian state”.
But, she added, she welcomed ‘every step towards peace’.
isb-ko / sof / par / dv