Days after Israel acknowledged Morocco’s claim to the contentious Western Sahara, Moroccan King Mohammed VI extended an invitation to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to travel to Morocco.
The invitation was sent in a warm, personal letter in which His Majesty thanked the State of Israel for its recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over the Western Sahara,” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement it posted on Wednesday.
According to a letter from King Mohammed VI to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the visit will create fresh opportunities for fostering closer relationships between their two nations.
The Abraham Accords, a set of agreements between Israel and a handful of its Arab neighbors, allowed for the normalization of relations between Israel and Morocco in 2020. Despite numerous visits from senior Israeli officials, this will be the first time an Israeli has made the trip.
As Spain ended its colonial presence there this week, Israel became the second nation after the United States to acknowledge Morocco’s claim to the oil-rich region it acquired in 1975.
Native Sahwari rebels started a fight to prevent Morocco from annexing the region; a truce signed in 1991 broke through in 2020. Top officials in both nations were reportedly figuring out the specifics of the visit, according to a statement from Netanyahu’s office.
Moroccan Jews, who have been in the nation for millennia, have had close contact with the government even when there have been no diplomatic links with Israel.
A renowned researcher estimates that the nation’s Jewish population, which was formerly expected to number in the hundreds of thousands, now numbers barely over 2,000.
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