Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday hailed as “historic” a normalisation agreement with Morocco and anticipated direct flights between the two countries soon.
In a televised address, he thanked Moroccan King Mohammed VI “for taking this historic decision to bring an historic peace between us”.
Netanyahu said the people of Israel and Morocco have had a “warm relationship in the modern period”.
“We will resume liaison offices quickly between Israel and Morocco and work as rapidly as possible to establish full diplomatic relations,” Netanyahu said.
Morocco and Israel had respectively maintained liaison offices in Tel Aviv and Rabat in the 1990s, before closing them in 2000.
“We’ll also institute direct flights… giving this bridge of peace an even more solid foundation,” the premier said.
Netanyahu also alluded to a “tremendous friendship shown by the kings of Morocco and the people of Morocco to the Jewish community there.”
He said the hundreds of thousands Moroccan Jews who immigrated to Israel “formed a human bridge” between the countries.
In the 1950s and 60s, Jews from Iraq, Yemen and Morocco migrated to the Jewish state, where key posts were in the hands of Ashkenazi Jews, who hail from Europe.
Called Mizrahim, Jewish migrants from Arab states settled outside big cities, and felt excluded at the time by the Israeli left wing, which was then in power.
Read the article in International Business Times (AFP News).