Morocco upper house speaker to visit Israel next week

RABAT, Morocco (AA) – The speaker of Morocco’s House of Councilors, the country’s upper house of parliament, will visit Israel next week.

In a statement, the council said Naam Miyara will visit Israel on September 7 as part of a regional tour that also includes Jordan and Palestine.

In his capacity as Speaker of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean, Miyara will be the first prominent Moroccan political official to visit Israel since the two countries resumed diplomatic relations in 2020.

This visit comes “based on the priority given by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean for dialogue and communication, as it is the only forum in which Palestine and Israel participate through their national parliaments,” the assembly said.

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean is an international organization founded in 2005 by the national parliaments of the countries of the Euro-Mediterranean region. It includes 31 parliaments, including those of Morocco, Egypt, Algeria, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya and Palestine.

During his stay in Israel, Miyara will visit the Knesset (Israel’s parliament) to explore prospects and ways of strengthening bilateral cooperation between the two legislative institutions.

Israel and Morocco resumed their diplomatic relations in December 2020 after they were suspended in 2000 following the outbreak of the second Palestinian Intifada.

Morocco became the fourth Arab country to normalize ties with Israel in 2020 after the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan under the US-brokered “Abraham Accords.”

For Palestinians, these normalization treaties are a “stab in the back” allowing Arab-Muslim supporters to pursue national interests while putting the just cause of Palestinian liberation on the back burner.