Dozens of human rights activists demonstrated in front of the Moroccan parliament building in the capital Rabat on Monday in protest at the visit of the Chief of Staff of the Israeli occupation army, Aviv Kochavi, the Middle East Monitor reported.
The protest was called by the popular National Action Group for Palestine, which opposes the normalisation between Morocco and Israel. Demonstrators chanted slogans condemning the visit and normalization.
Last month, Israeli military officials participated as observers in a major military drill in Morocco, which saw the participation of troops from the US, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Chad, Brazil, the United Kingdom and others.https://t.co/tQ5bISYLF9
— The New Arab (@The_NewArab) July 18, 2022
Kochavi arrived in Morocco as part of the framework to strengthen military and security cooperation between Tel Aviv and Rabat, which started to take shape in April 2020. He is expected to meet with senior officials in the military establishment in Morocco. This is the first public visit of its kind and will last three days.
According to the head of the Moroccan Observatory against Normalization, Ahmed Wehman, the protest represented “condemnation of the visit of the war criminal,” who, as he put it, “shed the blood of thousands of Lebanese and Arab Palestinians.”
The Israeli army chief is reportedly on a visit to Morocco starting Monday, in what is considered the highest-profile military engagement between Israel and the North African Arab country. https://t.co/7OiWFKcza7 pic.twitter.com/3lmXHfsHF5
— The Palestine Chronicle (@PalestineChron) July 18, 2022
Wehman told Anadolu news agency that Kochavi’s place “is in court so that justice can have its say with him, and he will be punished for what he has committed with his hands, which are stained with the blood of innocents.”
Israel and Morocco signed a security memorandum of understanding at the end of November last year during the visit of Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz to Rabat. Diplomatic relations between the two countries were resumed in December 2020 after a break of twenty years. Morocco froze relations following the outbreak of the second Palestinian intifada in 2000.
(MEMO, PC, Social Media)
