A protester holds up a sign bearing an image of Moroccan Microsoft engineer Ibtihal Abou al-Saad, after a video circulated on social media showed her protesting against the American company’s alleged provision of artificial intelligence technologies to Israel in its ongoing war in Gaza, during a national march in support of Palestinians and against Morocco’s normalization of ties with Israel, in the capital Rabat, on April 6, 2025. (Credit: Abdel Majid Bziouat / AFP)
“Palestine resists,” chanted several thousand demonstrators in Rabat on Sunday, during a rally to express solidarity with the people of the Gaza Strip and to demand an end to the normalization of diplomatic relations between Morocco and Israel. Under heavy rain, the protesters marched through the capital at the call of the “National Action Group for Palestine,” a coalition bringing together several political organizations, including the Islamist Justice and Development Party (PJD).
“Moroccans stand with Gaza,” said the director of a private school in Rabat to AFP, requesting anonymity. “They want to show they have no ties to normalization.” This latest mobilization comes a week after a widely attended previous protest, marking an intensification of demonstrations in the country since the Israeli army resumed its offensive against the Islamist movement Hamas on March 18, after a two-month truce in Gaza. More than 1,570 Palestinians have been killed since then, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
The normalization of ties between Morocco and Israel was decided at the end of 2020 under the so-called Abraham Accords, brokered by the United States, in exchange for Washington’s recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over the disputed territory of Western Sahara. Several large-scale protests have taken place in Morocco since the start of the war in Gaza, which began with a Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, to demand the repeal of a normalization process that had previously faced only limited opposition.
Morocco has officially called “for the immediate cessation of the Israeli war on Gaza,” without questioning normalization. For Ahmed Ouihmane, 65, president of the Moroccan Observatory Against Normalization, Moroccans want “to denounce the complicity of the hypocritical West in the massacres” in Gaza. “And to remind the ‘normalizers’ that they too are complicit.”
“Palestine resists,” chanted several thousand demonstrators in Rabat on Sunday, during a rally to express solidarity with the people of the Gaza Strip and to demand an end to the normalization of diplomatic relations between Morocco and Israel. Under heavy rain, the protesters marched through the capital at the call of the “National Action Group for Palestine,” a coalition bringing together several political organizations, including the Islamist Justice and Development Party (PJD).“Moroccans stand with Gaza,” said the director of a private school in Rabat to AFP, requesting anonymity. “They want to show they have no ties to normalization.” This latest mobilization comes a week after a widely attended previous protest, marking an intensification of demonstrations in the country since the Israeli army resumed...