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Rabat – With new revelations on the France-Morocco political crisis making the rounds, world-renowned Moroccan writer Tahaer Ben Jelloun has attributed the bilateral tension to Emnauel Macron’s “clumsiness.”
“Macron was very, very clumsy. He disrespected the King of Morocco.That’s what I know from very reliable sources,” Benjelloun said in an interview with i24News channel.
The French leader made his clumsy comments during a conversation with King Mohammed VI, Benejelloune revealed, noting that Macron complained to the Moroccan monarch about Morocco’s alleged spying on him with Israeli spyware Pegasus.
“I give you my word of honor that I did not spy on you. It’s not my style,” Benjelloun quoted the King as responding to the French president’s complaint.
But “Macron answered him with a few things that I cannot say here,” Benejelloune added. “He answered him in an awkward way and the King didn’t like it because he had given him his word of honor and Macron didn’t believe it. Relations [between Morocco and France] have since been broken.”
The Pegasus case refers to unproven allegations by NGOs, including Amnesty International and Forbidden Stories, that Morocco used the Israeli spyware Pegasus to spy on journalists, activists, and foreign dignitaries.
While many of France’s leading media outlets have over the months repeatedly referenced the NGOs’ claims in their unrelenting coverage of Morocco, they have produced or quoted no evidence confirming the accusations associating Morocco with Pegasus use.
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Meanwhile, a number of experts have stressed the absence of any evidence linking Rabat to the use of the spyware.
“Morocco has clearly been the victim” of similar attempts for “a long time,” French lawyer Olivia Baratelli said in February this year.
David Zenati, a French judicial expert, made similar remarks recently, stressing the need for “extreme” caution on any reports accusing Morocco of using the Pegasus software.
“The technical elements provided” by NGOs who made the accusations do not in “any way allow knowing or locate the user of the program,” he said.
During his interview with i24News, Benjelloun also took issue with France’s hostile campaign against Morocco at the European Parliament.
According to him, Macron sent Stephane Sejourne, president of the Renew Europe group, to the EU Parliament to make a “very anti-Moroccan resolution” in January this year. The resolution had accused Morocco of “harassing” and “intimidating” journalists, activists, and dissidents.
Benjelloun went further to explain the reason behind France’s hostility towards Morocco, suggesting that this was part of the French policy to reconcile with Algeria. The Moroccan writer has long criticized Macron’s perceived derailing of longstanding and once strategic french-Moroccan diplomatic relations to appease Algeria.
Read Also: The Overdue Need to Tell the True Story of French-Moroccan Relations
“The Algerians never give anything. They have what he himself described as the ‘memory rent’ and they are not going to let go of it.”
In French political discourse, the expression “memory rent” is mostly used in reference to the Algerian political establishment’s continued “exploitation” or “instrumentalization” of the troubled legacy of French colonialism. “The post-1962 Algerian nation was built on a memory rent” based on “a hatred of France,” Macron explained in September 2021.
Benjelloun’s comments come as many Moroccan and French political analysts and observers have criticized France’s foreign policy toward Morocco.
Christian Cambon, President of the France-Morocco friendship group in the Senate, took issue with President Macron’s North Africa foreign policy in February this year. “We were emerging from an intense crisis linked to visa policy and we are starting upside down” due to an “initiative” from Macron’s party,” he said.
Pierre Vermeren, a historian and professor at the University of Sorbonne, made similar comments earlier this year, stressing that the situation due to tension between France and countries in North Africa – including Morocco and Algeria – is a “firm warning” against French diplomacy.
