Casablanca, Morocco– Tens of thousands of Moroccans demonstrated Sunday in the country’s commercial capital Casablanca, calling for a permanent ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and the suspension of diplomatic ties with Israel.
The fledgling rapprochement between the North African country and Israel had made steady progress since 2020 when the two governments normalized relations, but that has been thrown into reverse by the deadly conflict in the Palestinian territory.
Morocco, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain all established diplomatic ties with Israel under the Abraham Accords in 2020, which were negotiated under the administration of former US president Donald Trump.
An AFP journalist reported Sunday that demonstrators in Casablanca waved Palestinian flags and demanded that Rabat suspend ties with Israel.
“It is not a truce that we need, but a permanent ceasefire” to give a chance “for peace, for the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state, with its capital in Jerusalem,” socialist MP Nabila Mounib told AFP on Sunday.
She said she hoped to see “the return of all those exiled in the Palestinian diaspora” and the release of Palestinian prisoners.
Hassan Bahadou of the anti-normalization alliance of leftist parties that organized the protest said: “We also condemn the silence of negligent Arab regimes allied with the Zionist entity (Israel).”
Pro-Palestinian demonstrations had declined in recent years in Morocco, but have surged since the Gaza war broke out.
Moroccan cardiologist Safae Abderazzak told AFP she was demonstrating “to condemn the Israeli aggression against our Palestinian brothers and against our fellow doctors who are being tortured and martyred in Gaza”.
A four-day truce came into effect on Friday in Gaza, seven weeks after the outbreak of war between Hamas and Israel, sparked by an unprecedented attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement on October 7.
The Hamas raids into southern Israel killed at least 1,400 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli officials.
Another 240 people were taken into Gaza as hostages.
In reprisal, Israel began bombarding the densely populated Palestinian enclave. The Hamas-run health ministry says that nearly 15,000 people have been killed in the territory since October 7.
As part of the truce, 39 Israelis and 19 foreign and dual-national hostages have been released since Friday by Hamas, in exchange for the liberation of 117 Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails.