Morocco awards Trump with the “Medal of Mohammed” for his role in normalization

Morocco awards Trump with  the “Medal of Mohammed” for his role in normalization

Hours before the end of his term, the former US President Donald Trump received the highest medal from Morocco for his role in the normalization agreement with Israel, in a special ceremony held in the Oval Office of the White House.

Morocco’s Ambassador to Washington Princess Lalla Jumana Alaoui presented the president with the “Medal of Mohammed”, an award from Morocco’s King Mohammed VI that is only reserved for heads of states.

Chief White House adviser and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, as well as the US’ Middle East envoy, Avi Berkowitz, also received awards for their efforts in the normalisation deal between Morocco and Israel.

Media channels were not allowed to attend the ceremony which took place secretly and was only disxlosed by a statement of the white house, which wanted to use the award as an achievement for Trump in his final and most critical days.

Rushing to Normalization

press reports stated that the King of Morocco, Mohammed VI, made an official direct invitation to the Prime Minister of the Occupation state, Benjamin Netanyahu, to visit the Moroccan soil, in response to a similar invitation made by Netanyahu to the Moroccan king to visit “Tel Aviv” after the normalization agreement.

The Israeli newspaper “Maariv”, confirmed the official Moroccan-Israeli communications, and added that Mohammed VI stipulated that resumption of peace negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis will be announced , as a pretext to justify his position on normalization and to claim that it it in favor of the Palestinians.

The Moroccan king wants to use his position as head of the Jerusalem Committee to restore his country’s position in mediating in the peace agreement with Egypt and pushing for the Oslo and Casablanca agreements. The king’s personal intervention aims to emphasize his position before the new US administration, according to the news paper.

Normalization achievements

After years of banning Israelis from entering the country, Israeli citizens will be enabled to enter Morocco without the need to obtain a visa.

The Israeli Interior Minister, Aryeh Deri, confirmed that he had spoken on the phone on Monday with his Moroccan counterpart Abdelouafi Laftit and they discussed mutual exemption of travel visas between the two countries.

Deri tweeted “This morning I spoke with my counterpart, the Moroccan Minister of Interior, Abdelouafi Laftit, and we decided to form teams, to facilitate the entry of foreign workers into the nursing industry and exemption from visas. I also shared with him memories of my hometown in Meknes and we exchanged invitations to visit Israel and Morocco”.

People’s Rejection

An opinion poll conducted by the Arab Opinion Index showed that the Moroccan peoples are still strongly against the recognition of Israel, unlike the official steps taken by the Moroccan government to normalize relations with Tel Aviv.

According to Middle East Eye, the Arab Opinion Index survey was carried out until September 2020 and was based on face-to-face interviews with 28,000 individuals from 13 Arab countries, including Morocco.

The results of the survey showed that participants from Morocco, Jordan, Palestine, Lebanon, Egypt and Mauritania considered Israel to be the main threat facing their countries.

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