From Declarations to Plumbing: How Morocco and Israel Are Locking In Normalization

By Mustapha Ezzarghani

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar meets with his Moroccan counterpart Nasser Bourita and US United Nations Ambassador Mike Waltz. Credits: MFA

The most important word to come out of the September 16 Morocco-Israel meeting in New York was not peace. It was implementation.

Setting up full embassies, exchanging ambassadors, restoring commercial flights, and hammering out investment and tax treaties may sound like the dull side of diplomacy. That is precisely why they matter. They are the essential plumbing that keeps an international partnership alive after political winds shift, crises erupt, and individual leaders leave office.

Convened by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz, the meeting brought Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita together with his Israeli counterpart, Gideon Sa’ar. The resulting joint statement was deliberately anchored in the tripartite framework signed in December 2020. Morocco and Israel confirmed plans to upgrade their liaison offices to full embassies and exchange ambassadors. They also set concrete targets: restoring direct flights by Moroccan and Israeli carriers before the end of the year, and finalizing bilateral investment-protection and double-taxation agreements by the end of 2026. The broader agenda covers trade, finance, technology, tourism, water, agriculture, food security, energy, telecommunications, regional security and high-level official visits. Washington and Israel also reiterated their recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara and their support for Rabat’s autonomy proposal as the basis for resolving the dispute. 

The timing was hard to miss. The meeting came one day after the sixth anniversary of the Abraham Accords and just ahead of the annual diplomatic gathering around the UN General Assembly. But the significance lies less in the symbolism than in the mechanics.

To understand why, look at the historical precedent. Morocco and Israel established liaison offices in 1994, only for Rabat to close them in 2000 following the outbreak of the Second Intifada. When relations were restored in 2020, they returned to the same limited diplomatic formula. Full ambassadors were never exchanged. The earlier liaison-office relationship therefore matters: an embassy is far more than a nameplate swap. It brings established diplomatic hierarchies, permanent consular infrastructure, routine inter-ministerial coordination and, crucially, a higher political cost if either side later decides to walk away. It takes an exceptional, leader-driven channel and turns it into ordinary government business. September 16 was not a brand-new normalization agreement; it was an attempt to finally institutionalize the old one. 

Still, a healthy dose of skepticism is warranted. The statement says the parties confirmed their agreement to elevate their diplomatic missions, but no ambassadors were named and no dates were set for credentials to be presented or embassy plaques to go up. There is precedent for promises getting ahead of reality. In August 2021, then-Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said the two countries would open full embassies within two months. In June 2022, he again announced that Morocco would open an embassy in Israel that summer. Neither upgrade materialized. Those earlier promises are worth remembering. This time, however, the commitment sits inside a trilateral written statement with concrete deadlines attached to flights and economic agreements. Until ambassadors actually present their credentials, though, it remains an intention rather than a completed fact. 

Why push it forward now, amid so much regional turbulence? The Gaza war pushed the bilateral relationship to its limits after October 7, 2023. Moroccan cities saw sustained protests demanding an end to normalization, while direct air travel largely disappeared. Yet Rabat chose not to sever relations. Instead, it continued to use the relationship selectively. In March 2024, Morocco sent more than 40 tons of humanitarian aid to Gaza through an unusual land route via Israel, an operation the Moroccan Foreign Ministry publicly announced. At the same time, security cooperation continued away from the cameras, culminating in a joint military work plan for 2026 agreed earlier this year. The operating logic has been strict compartmentalization: lower the political profile, but protect the machinery underneath. 

There is also an electoral clock ticking. Morocco holds parliamentary elections on September 23, while Israelis vote on October 27. Both dates are now officially set. Locking in technical agreements before those votes creates at least some bureaucratic insulation against whatever political volatility follows.

Rabat is hardly acting out of deference to an outside agenda; its calculus is overwhelmingly national. The 2020 agreement coincided with U.S. recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara, a position Israel formally adopted in July 2023. The original 2020 Morocco-U.S.-Israel declaration placed the Sahara question at the center of the bargain. Then, in October 2025, UN Security Council Resolution 2797 placed Morocco’s autonomy proposal at the center of a renewed negotiating framework while continuing to reference Sahrawi self-determination. For Rabat, Israeli ties also offer tangible strategic benefits: advanced defense systems, intelligence and cybersecurity cooperation, irrigation and agricultural technologies, and investment networks that fit Morocco’s ambitions to become a major manufacturing and logistics hub connecting Africa, Europe and the Atlantic. 

For Israel, the strategic prize is equally clear: a durable Arab and African partner with Atlantic access, significant regional reach and increasingly deep security cooperation. Morocco also brings something that distinguishes it from most other Abraham Accords states—a rich, lived Jewish history. Between 250,000 and 300,000 Jews lived in Morocco around 1948, and hundreds of thousands of Israelis today trace their family roots to the kingdom. Morocco’s 2011 constitution explicitly recognizes the “Hebraic” component of the country’s national heritage, while King Mohammed VI chairs the Al-Quds Committee of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, an institution focused on Jerusalem and the Palestinian issue. Those cultural and religious ties soften the diplomatic vocabulary, but sentiment only goes so far. Cultural affinity creates an opening; mutual self-interest does the heavy lifting.

Washington’s footprint remains distinct. The United States engineered and continues to underwrite the original 2020 bargain, which helps explain why the September 16 statement explicitly credited President Donald Trump and the Abraham Accords framework. Yet the New York meeting contained no major new American concession. It was principally an effort to consolidate ground already won before geopolitical circumstances change. Even the public narratives reflected the different interests involved: U.S. and Israeli messaging emphasized commerce, security and regional integration, while Morocco continued to stress both Western Sahara and its support for the Palestinian cause. Bourita has since argued explicitly that maintaining relations with Israel gives Morocco greater ability to assist Palestinians rather than limiting Rabat to rhetorical declarations. 

The economic deliverables may ultimately determine whether the relationship becomes truly difficult to reverse. Morocco and Israel had already signed more than 30 agreements, accords and memoranda of understanding within the first two years after normalization, covering everything from security and intelligence to agriculture and water management. The breadth of those early agreements was impressive, but foundational legal architecture remained incomplete. Investment safeguards and double-taxation agreements—the unglamorous rules that make serious cross-border business easier—are precisely the kind of measures the two governments are now promising to finish.

Washington has highlighted a roughly 500 percent increase in bilateral trade since normalization, but percentage growth from an extremely low starting point can be misleading. citeturn248057news80 Real durability requires something more important than a dramatic percentage: manufacturers, technology companies, researchers, investors, airlines and tourism operators with actual money and institutional interests at stake if relations collapse. That is also the broader lesson of the Abraham Accords. As a recent Mid.East Journal analysis of the Accords at six argued, normalization becomes harder to reverse as trade, travel, security cooperation and other relationships generate their own constituencies and momentum.

Domestic opposition, however, cannot simply be brushed aside. Morocco’s Justice and Development Party has reiterated its opposition to normalization, while the Al Adl Wal Ihsane movement went further after the New York announcement, calling for the Israeli liaison office to be closed and cooperation halted. More importantly, public opinion has moved sharply. Arab Barometer found support among Moroccans for normalization falling from 31 percent in 2022 to just 13 percent after October 7. The Arab Barometer findings illustrate the central political constraint facing Rabat: the strategic relationship may have survived, but public enthusiasm for it has not. 

Regional tensions compound the problem. Algeria, which severed diplomatic relations with Morocco in 2021, backs the Polisario Front in Western Sahara and strongly opposes regional normalization with Israel. Expanding Israeli-Moroccan security ties therefore inevitably intersects with the much older strategic competition between Algiers and Rabat. At home, meanwhile, Morocco’s support for the Palestinian cause remains deeply woven into its social, religious and diplomatic identity. Maintaining relations with Israel while continuing to advocate Palestinian statehood is not a contradiction Rabat has solved. It is one the monarchy has chosen to manage.

Ultimately, September 16 laid out an operational trajectory rather than announcing a completed mission. If ambassadors actually take their posts, direct flights resume and the commercial treaties clear ratification, Morocco and Israel will have moved another step away from a fragile relationship dependent on palace-level diplomacy and toward an institutionalized partnership rooted in diplomatic, security and economic infrastructure.

That distinction matters. Political sentiment can change quickly. Bureaucracies, commercial contracts, military committees, tax treaties and air routes tend to move more slowly.

That is the real significance of the plumbing. The more of it Morocco and Israel install, the harder the relationship becomes to switch off.

Mustapha Ezzarghani is a Moroccan-American Muslim peace activist, author, and journalist. He is one of the leading voices advancing dialogue and cooperation between Muslim and Jewish communities, advocating for peace, mutual understanding, and stronger ties between Morocco, Israel, and the United States through public speaking, writing, and civic engagement.