King Mohammed to Set Up Group Promoting Ties With Moroccan Jews Abroad

Morocco’s King Mohammed VI kick-started the process on Wednesday of establishing a committee to boost the country’s ties with Moroccan Jews abroad.

The Committee for Moroccan Jews Abroad will be one of three new bodies slated for establishment by the kingdom, as part of broader recognition of Judaism as a “component” of national culture in Morocco, according to the official Moroccan News Agency.

The decision could pave the way for closer ties with 470,000 Moroccan Jews in Israel, who comprise the second-largest Jewish ethnic group in the country, according to Israel’s Central Bureau for Statistics in 2020.

Acting on the king’s orders, Interior Minister Abdelouafi Laftit proposed two other bodies after consulting with the country’s 3000-strong Jewish community, which will be responsible for managing the Jewish community’s affairs in the country and dealing with all things related to preservation of heritage respectively.

Even before its normalization agreement with Israel in 2020, the Kingdom became the first Arab country to incorporate Jewish history and culture into its school syllabus and inaugurated the first Jewish museum in the Arab world.

The royal decree comes ahead of a milestone visit by Israel Defense Forces Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi to Morocco on Monday, the first time the country’s top brass will visit the North African country.

Morocco and Israel resumed formal ties in late 2020 as part of the U.S.-brokered Abraham Accords, even though the two states have had covert relations for decades and Morocco had openly accepted Israeli tourists.

During U.S. President Joe Biden’s Middle East tour last week, a U.S. official also told Haaretz that Rabat played a key role in advancing the Israeli decision to give Palestinians around-the-clock access to the Allenby Bridge border crossing into Jordan, the first time an Abraham Accord signatory took on the mantle of mediation.