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Doha – During a party meeting held Saturday in Casablanca, Abdelilah Benkirane, the Secretary General of the Justice and Development Party (PJD), once again called upon former Head of Government Saad Eddine El Othmani to clarify the circumstances that led him to sign the Abraham Accords in December 2020, re-establishing Morocco’s diplomatic ties with Israel.
Benkirane emphasized that the PJD has consistently rejected normalization with Israel, stating, “We have never been with normalization, and we will never be with it.”
He acknowledged that while the state has its own policies and “circumstances,” the PJD “cannot sell out the Palestinian cause.”
The Islamist party leader reiterated that El Othmani, who served as Head of Government at the time of the agreement, should apologize for his actions.
“Saad Eddine El Othmani, the former Head of Government, is the one who must apologize, because what he did has circumstances that he knows,” Benkirane asserted.
This is not the first time Benkirane has pressed El Othmani for an explanation. In July, he expressed his dissatisfaction with Morocco’s solidarity campaign for Palestinians amid the Israeli Occupation Forces’ (IOF) massacres in Gaza, describing it as “weak and without political impact.”
At the time, Benkirane also noted that he was still waiting for El Othmani to explain the circumstances surrounding the signing of the normalization agreement.
The PJD has a long history of opposing normalization with Israel. In 1996, El Othmani himself penned an article qualifying normalization as civilizational genocide and expressed staunch opposition to developing ties with Israel as recently as August 2020.
Read also: Report: Morocco’s Reputation Declines in Israel for Supporting Palestine
Immediately after the normalization deal was announced in late 2020, the PJD issued a statement reiterating its firm position against the “Zionist occupation and the crimes it commits against the Palestinian people.”
However, the party’s stance appeared to waver when some PJD members, including Benkirane, initially expressed support for the normalization deal in December 2020.
Benkirane later clarified his position in February 2021, re-emphasizing the PJD’s anti-normalization stance and noting that the decision was made by the state, not the party.
El Othmani has since claimed that he was “pressured” by higher authorities to sign the agreement, describing it as a “painful and difficult” moment.
The apparent reversal in the party’s position led to accusations of ideological incoherence and political ambiguity, which likely contributed to the PJD’s significant losses in the 2021 general elections, where the party went from being the largest in Parliament to holding only 13 seats.
