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Fanny Mergui has no doubts: Moroccan Jews are already “packing their bags” to board direct flights to Israel after the kingdom normalized its relations with the Jewish state.
Morocco, home to North Africa’s largest Jewish community and the ancestral homeland of some 700,000 Israelis, is also hoping for an influx of Israeli tourists when the Covid-19 pandemic subsides.
“I am very happy” that the five-hour route is served by direct flights, said Mergui, a Moroccan Jew who lives in Casablanca.
“It’s a real revolution.”
The first direct commercial flight from Tel Aviv to Rabat in December to mark the tripartite agreement brokered by the United States, under which Washington also recognized Moroccan sovereignty over the disputed Western Sahara.
But tickets for scheduled commercial flights have yet to go on sale.
Bureaucratic delays have been compounded by the pandemic, which has forced Morocco to mainly close its borders since March and impose a nationwide curfew in December.
Singer Suzanne Harroch, who had to wait 14 hours in transit through a Paris airport during her last visit to Israel, called the Israeli-Moroccan rapprochement a “miracle”.
“A big part of my family lives there,” said the 67-year-old. “I can’t wait to see them more and more often.”
Historical links
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 sparked an overwhelming Israeli response.
However, relations continued quietly, with some 149 million dollars in bilateral trade between 2014 and 2017, according to Moroccan information.
The reopening of the liaison offices could make it possible for Moroccans to obtain visas to travel to Israel much more easily.
Morocco also hopes to welcome more Israeli visitors.
A rabbi gives a sermon at the Beth El synagogue in the Moroccan city of Casablanca on January 5, 2021. By FADEL SENNA (AFP / File) Official statistics show that before the coronavirus pandemic, up to 70,000 Israeli tourists used to visit the country each year.
Most were of Moroccan origin and had kept close ties with their country of origin.
“The majority of Israelis of Moroccan origin are thrilled,” said Avraham Avizemer, who left Casablanca at a young age and has lived in Israel for decades.
The fact that their children and grandchildren can come home “is huge,” he said.
An Israeli already in Morocco is Elan.
The 34-year-old was sitting in the library of a synagogue in Casablanca, where he, along with other Israeli Jews, mostly of Moroccan origin, receives religion lessons from a Moroccan rabbi.
“Direct flights would make travel easier,” he said.
The Jewish community in Morocco dates back to antiquity.
It was spurred on in the 15th century by Jews expelled from Spain, and by the late 1940s had reached around 250,000 people – about a tenth of the population. But that number plummeted as many Moroccan Jews made their way to the new state of Israel.
Today, around 3,000 Jews remain in Morocco.
‘Happy, optimistic’
Businessman George Sebat, 56, said he was “very happy and very optimistic” about the normalization of Morocco, citing positive impacts for tourism and the economy.
Prosper Bensimon, speaking after evening prayer at the Em Habanim synagogue in Casablanca, agreed.
“Four of my Muslim neighbors want to accompany me on my first visit from Morocco,” he said.
But normalization has not been universally welcomed by Moroccans.
Moroccan Jews, pictured here praying at the Em Habanim synagogue in Casablanca, are a community that dates back to ancient times. By FADEL SENNA (AFP / File) Zion Assidon, an academic and prominent left-wing activist who supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, is fiercely opposed.
“The latest fad is to justify the shame of normalization by citing Morocco’s historic ties to Moroccan settlers,” he wrote on Facebook.
Mergui, a former Zionist youth activist, said she immigrated to Israel in the 1960s but returned to Morocco after the Six Day War of 1967.
“I could not accept that the Jewish state, which I believed in, occupying Palestinian land,” she said.
She urged Israel to support “the creation of a Palestinian state”.
But, she added, she welcomes “every step towards peace”.
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