Rabat – After nearly two years since the Abraham Accords began which facilitated the re-establishment of diplomatic relations between Morocco and Israel, the new partnership between the two countries offers unique opportunities and challenges, a report from the Middle East Institute details.

While Morocco has gained some capacity in the security and technology fields thanks to the partnerships, it has also enflamed some regional tensions and made Morocco walk a fine line to maintain its support for the Palestinian cause.

Culminating in Algeria’s unilateral decision to cut ties with Morocco in 2021, the rapprochement between Rabat and Tel Aviv undoubtedly rattled the Tebboune regime, the report by Intissar Fakir claimed.

Military cooperation

The tensions in the region, fueled mainly by the rivalry between Morocco and its eastern neighbor, are nothing new, Fakir said. Particularly, the Western Sahara dispute which has been the main driving force of the rift between the two countries for decades.

Adding to already strong military partnerships with the EU and the US, increased cooperation with Israel has rattled top Algerian officials.

“Morocco’s access to Israeli technology, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in particular, allows it to leapfrog ahead in enhancing its military power,” the report notes.

In August 2021, Algeria announced that it was cutting relations with Morocco, accusing its neighbor of backing terrorist organizations and causing wildfires in the Kabylia region.

Morocco’s rapprochement with Israel and its work on strengthening its military arsenal might have played a crucial role in that, but it also pushed Algeria to bolster its military too.

Media reports from Algeria uncovered back in October that the country’s leadership was looking to increase defense spending to $23 billion in 2023, a 120% increase from what the country had been allocating its military in the past 10 years.

Additionally, recent purchases of Turkish drones by Algeria, as well as becoming one of Russia’s top arms customers shows the effects that the Israeli partnership is having on north Africa’s politics.

Importance of negotiations

Although Moroccan-Algerian tensions predate the Abraham Accords, the recent escalations have highlighted the need for negotiations between the two countries to at least lower some of the animosity, Fakir posits.

“An important goal for international partners and supporters with a direct or indirect stake in regional stability is to build opportunities and platforms through which Morocco and Algeria can engage,” she says in the report, emphasizing that competition can take place between the two in a healthy environment.

Given the long history and complexity of disagreements between the two countries, it remains to be seen how negotiations will play out, or if they will happen at all.

Since Algeria’s decision to cut ties with its neighboring African country, Morocco has repeatedly called on its eastern neighbor to join it for talks to solve the issue, while maintaining that it will remain a reliable partner to the Algerian people.

However, those calls have repeatedly been ignored in Algiers, with the country still refusing to join any initiative for negotiations.

Until then, the report suggests that Morocco would aim to take advantage of every aspect of its new partnerships to draw a hard line against Algeria (and the Polisario Front) in case tensions were to increase.