Morocco's Israel normalisation 'squandered chances of reconciliation' says Algeria's opposition

A leading Algerian opposition politician broke official silence on Morocco King Mohammed VI's recent call for reconciliation, saying Rabat's normalisation with Israel made ending the diplomatic crisis more difficult.

Abderrazak Makri, head of the Movement of Society for Peace (MSP), Algeria's main Islamist party, listed his reasons for the poisoned relations between Algeria and Morocco, which included Rabat's establishment of ties with Israel.

Algeria ended diplomatic relations with Morocco in August 2021, accusing it of "hostile acts". 

King Mohammed gave a rare speech this week about the political situation between Morocco and Algeria, saying he is open to restoring ties, although the Algerian government has not responded to this overture.

"The statements made by the King of Morocco are good if there was nothing to contradict them [in reality]," he wrote on Facebook.

"It was possible that Moroccan and Algerian civil society would get involved to overcome the difficulties and help those responsible for rapprochement if the Moroccan authorities had not done something to blow everything up."

He said while he welcomed the "good intentions" of the king, his words do not reflect the reality of his country's political and diplomatic actions.

He accused Morocco of supporting "separatist parties, [and] agents of external forces that threaten the stability and unity". 

Makri said that normalisation between Morocco and Israel in 2020 was another stumbling block to diplomatic progress between the neighbours.

"Betraying the Palestinian cause and bringing the enemy geographically far from [Algeria] to [its] borders with its spies, weapons and malicious corrupt schemes to threaten [Algeria] directly from Moroccan lands," he wrote.

On Monday, Echorouk, a private Algerian newspaper, quoted a "source close to the Algerian authority" who described the king's speech as a "non-event".

Abdelaziz Rahabi, the former Algerian ambassador to Madrid, said the speech "cannot represent a diplomatic event or open up prospects for relations between the two countries".

In 2021, Morocco's ambassador to the UN, Omar Hilale, claimed Algeria's support for the "self-determination" of the Western Sahara region was hypocritical given Algiers' own denial of the same rights for the Kabyle people. 

Algerian officials described the remarks as "particularly dangerous" but the rivalry between the two North African neighbours goes back to the mid-1960s.

Following both countries' independence, Morocco attempted to seize a piece of desert territory that French colonial administrators had awarded to Algeria in 1963.

The Moroccan move led to a brief outbreak of several weeks of fighting between the two countries dubbed the "Sand War". 

Since then, the two countries have endured a continuous diplomatic standoff, with border closures and envoys being recalled whenever tensions mount.

Algeria's backing for the Polisario Front separatist movement has exacerbated the conflict in Western Sahara and relations between Algiers and Rabat. The Polisario calls for the independence of Western Sahara, a territory Rabat considers its own.

Algeria, which considers Western Sahara the last colony in Africa, says its support for the Polisario Front is rooted in its own struggle against French colonisation.