It is an extremely sensitive situation that the former head of the Moroccan government, Abdelilah Benkirane, chose to reiterate the expansionist desires of his country.
While the writer Boualem Sansal has been prosecuted and imprisoned in Algeria for almost two months for having maintained that part of the territory of Algeria belonged to Morocco, Benkirane agreed in the same direction, assuring that Tindouf is Moroccan land .
The leader of the Islamist PJD (Justice and Development Party) unearthed the speech developed by the leader of the Istisklal party in the 1950s.
Allal El Fassi before launched the idea of “greater Morocco” encompassing, in addition to the current territory of the kingdom, Western Sahara and part of the lands of Algeria, Mauritania, as far as Mali, and even further, to ‘in Saint-Louis, Senegal.
It is in accordance with this expansionist concept that Morocco has illegally occupied Western Sahara for 50 years. The kingdom waited 9 years, until 1969, to recognize the independence of Mauritania which occurred in 1960.
Upon Algeria’s independence, Morocco attempted to take part of Algerian territory by force, but had to retreat in the face of resistance from the Algerian army. This episode, which took place in 1963, is known as “the war of the sands”.
In 1972, King Hassan II definitively recognized the Algerian borders as part of a border agreement signed between the two countries.
But the idea has been unearthed for some time in Morocco and supported by part of the Moroccan political class.
In March 2023, the newspaper Maroc Hebdo published a map of Morocco encompassing a large part of southwest Algeria. The “claim” was also expressed by the director of royal documentation Bahija Simou and the Moroccan preacher Ahmed Raissouni.
Algeria – Morocco: Abdelilah Benkirane claims Algerian territories
It is now taken over by Abdelilah Benkirane, who held the highest position in the Moroccan government (2011-2017). During a party meeting in Casablanca, Saturday January 11, the former Prime Minister took up the false information circulating in Morocco about the history of the Moroccan claim.
Moroccans say that colonial France proposed to Morocco to “return” its so-called territories, but King Mohamed V refused, preferring to wait for the independence of Algeria to “recover” them.
All of this is obviously completely false and is not supported by any credible document or testimony.
-“Touat, Tindouf and Bechar are Moroccan territories. Their inhabitants are Moroccans. Before the independence of Algeria, the population of Eastern Sahara requested Moroccan passports from the Moroccan embassy in Paris,” argued Benkirane, “Eastern Sahara” being the term used by Moroccan propaganda to support these expansionist aims.
Benkirane does not seem to recognize the 1972 agreement, although signed by King Hassan II.
The PJD is trying to create a diversion after finding itself in a very uncomfortable position in relation to what is happening in Palestine. It was a Prime Minister from its ranks, Saad-eddine El Othmani, who signed the normalization agreements with Israel in December 2020.
Bengrina responds to Benkirane and accuses the Makhzen
Curiously, neither this party nor any other Moroccan political group calls for the restitution of territories that are truly Moroccan from a historical point of view, and which are under foreign sovereignty. We think in particular of the enclaves of Melilla and Ceuta that Spain owns on the Mediterranean coast of Morocco.
Abdelilah Benkirane’s comments are anything but innocent. They come as the crisis between France and Algeria is aggravated by the arrest of the writer Boualem Sansal who made similar comments.
In an interview with far-right French media last October, Sansal argued that part of western Algeria belonged to Morocco. Returning to Algeria in mid-November, he was arrested at Algiers airport. He has since been placed in pre-trial detention and prosecuted for “undermining the integrity of the national territory”.
In reaction to Benkirane’s statements, the Algerian El Bina party pointed out that, until now, the Moroccan Makhzen has never dared to make such comments publicly, leaving it to its unofficial relays to do so.
“The Moroccan Makhzen is affected by the complex of colonial expansionist occupation, which is matched only by what the Zionist occupier is doing in our Arab region, which respects no borders or no pact,” wrote the Moroccan party. Abdelkader Bengrina in a press release released this Monday, January 13.
El Bina also wonders why each time the declarations of Moroccan PJD leaders always agree with the attacks against Algeria “from the hawks of the Zionist entity and the French extreme right”.
According to Dahou Ould Kablia, former Minister of the Interior and president of the Association of Former MALG (Ministry of Armaments and General Liaisons), the Algerian intelligence service during the war of national liberation, the problems between Algeria and its western neighbor began in 1957, with the “territorial ambitions” of Morocco.
Read also: Algeria – Morocco: “The problems started in 1957”
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