Fanny Mergui has no doubts: Moroccan Jews “are already packing” to embark on direct flights to Israel after the kingdom normalized ties with the Jewish state.
Morocco, home to the largest Jewish community in North Africa and an ancestral homeland of some 700,000 Israelis, also hopes to receive a flow of Israeli tourists when the Covid-19 pandemic subsides.
“I am very happy” that the five-hour route will be served by direct flights, said Mergui, a Moroccan Jew who lives in Casablanca.
“It is a real revolution.”
The first direct commercial flight left Tel Aviv to Rabat in December to mark the US-mediated three-way agreement, under which Washington also recognized Moroccan sovereignty over disputed Western Sahara.
But tickets for scheduled commercial flights have not yet gone on sale.
Bureaucratic delays have been exacerbated by the pandemic, which has forced Morocco to mainly close its borders since March and impose a curfew across the country in December.
Singer Suzanne Harroch, who had to wait 14 hours in transit at a Paris airport the last time she visited Israel, called the Moroccan-Israeli rapprochement a “miracle”.
“A large part of my family lives there,” said the 67-year-old. “I can’t wait to see you more often and more often.”
– Historical ties –
Israel established liaison offices in Morocco in the 1990s, during a short-lived diplomatic opening.
But they were closed again in the early 2000s, when the second Palestinian intifada sparked an overwhelming response from Israel.
However, relations continued quietly, with about $ 149 million in bilateral trade between 2014-2017, according to Moroccan press reports.
The reopening of liaison offices could make it much easier for Moroccans to obtain visas to visit Israel.
Morocco also hopes to receive more Israeli visitors.
Official statistics show that before the coronavirus pandemic, some 70,000 Israeli tourists used to visit the country annually.
Most were of Moroccan descent and maintained close ties with their country of origin.
“Most Israelis of Moroccan origin are amazed,” said Avraham Avizemer, who left Casablanca as a child and lived in Israel for decades.
The fact that their children and grandchildren can return “is enormous,” he said.
An Israeli who is already in Morocco is Elan.
The 34-year-old was sitting in the library of a synagogue in Casablanca, where together with other Israeli Jews, most of whom are of Moroccan origin, he is taking 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 driven in the 15th century by Jews expelled from Spain and, in the late 1940s, reached about 250,000 people – about a tenth of the population. But that number dropped as many Moroccan Jews headed for the newly founded State of Israel.
Today, about 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.
Prosperous Bensimon, speaking after the evening prayer at the synagogue In Habanim de Casablanca, agreed.
“Four of my Muslim neighbors want to accompany me on my first visit to Morocco,” he said.
But normalization was not universally welcomed by Moroccans.
Sion Assidon, an academic and prominent leftist activist who supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, is strongly opposed.
“The latest trend is to justify the shame of normalization by citing Morocco’s historic links with Moroccan settlers,” 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, which I believed in, occupied Palestinian land,” she said.
She asked Israel to support “the creation of a Palestinian state”.
But, she added, it welcomes “every step towards peace”.
isb-ko / sof / par / dv