Morocco’s Justice and Development Party (PJD) has reiterated its condemnation of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, calling on the Moroccan government to end all contact and ties with the Jewish state.
The party reiterated its appeal during the regular meeting of the PJD’s general secretariat held on Saturday.
Following the meeting, which was chaired by PJD’s Secretary General and former Head of Government Abdelilah Benkirane, the party released a lengthy readout calling on the Moroccan government to sever “all communication, contact, and normalization with the oppressive Zionist entity.”
The PJD’s demands on the Moroccan government included the closing of the Israeli liaison office in Rabat and the expulsion of all Israeli representative from Moroccan soil.
The appeal comes amid the ongoing Israeli genocidal war targeting civilian infrastructure and refugee camps across Gaza and the occupied West Bank, killing tens of thousands of Palestinian children and women.
PJD also called on Arab and Islamic countries to shoulder their historical responsibility and to take “all necessary measures to support the Palestinian people.”
As Israel continues its relentless and merciless war in Gaza and against the very idea of Palestine, the former ruling party of Morocco argued, anyone who claims to stand with Palestinians has to cut all forms of communication or contact with the Jewish state.
The PJD also expressed support for the Palestinian resistance, including Hamas and its military wing, the AlQassam Brigades.
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In particular, the party condoned Hamas’s surprise October 7 on southern Israel, describing it as a “natural and just response to the Zionist occupation’s policy of killing and arresting Palestinians in dozens, evicting them from their homes and destroying them” to expand their illegal settlements on Palestinian land.
PJD’s lengthy and strong-worded statement also “highly appreciated” the speech King Mohammed VI addressed to the extraordinary session of the Arab and Islamic Summit on Saturday.
In the speech, the monarch called for an urgent and tangible de-escalation” in Gaza to pave the way for a permanent ceasefire.
“There is no alternative to genuine peace in the region – peace which guarantees the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people on the basis of the two-state solution,” the monarch said in his speech.
The PJD statement urging Morocco to cut ties with Israel comes in the wake of a recent phone call between Benkirane and Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas’s Political Bureau.
On Sunday, a PJD statement indicated that Benkirane had expressed to the Hamas leadership his party’s condolences and sympathy with “martyrdom” of all the Palestinian fighters who have been killed by Israel’s “brutal and ongoing aggression.”
The call by Morocco’s former ruling party to freeze the evolving Morocco-Israel relationship comes as many in the Global South, especially in the Arab world and in Muslim-majority countries, call for global action to stop the killing of innocent Palestinians and hold Israel accountable for its war crimes.
More than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed so far in Israel’s ongoing genocidal offensive on the Gaza Strip, which began on October 7. Tens of thousands have also been injured with various degrees of severity.
