U.S.-Israeli Blackmail

Europe is still discussing the incursion of some 60,000 migrants from Morocco into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta and how zealously and cynically Tel Aviv and Washington exploit this situation.

Analysts accuse Morocco of dispatching illegal migrants into Ceuta. Many note that Tel Aviv and Washington D.C. have fervently used this situation in their own interests.

There indeed remain a lot of questions to the Moroccan government, which European analysts believe has regularly used migration flows to penalize its European neighbors and extort political concessions. Yet – as Sarah Leah Whitson, a human rights activist and former executive director of a division of Human Rights Watch, writes in her policy brief – the current crisis appears to mainly benefit Israel and the United States.

They have seized on the politically embarrassing episode to weaken a Spanish government they view as one of their principal European antagonists.

Moroccan breaches of the Spanish border have a long history. In 2021, Ceuta and Melilla, Spain’s other enclave in Africa, also saw a mass incursion of 6,000 people into their territories. Spain explicitly blamed Morocco for deliberately relaxing its migration controls to punish the government for criticizing Trump’s 2020 recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara, which Trump did in exchange for Morocco entering into the Abraham Accords and normalizing its relations with Israel.

To reward it for acting as Europe’s external border police, the European Union has also repeatedly provided Morocco with hundreds of millions of Euros in aid, most recently as part of the 2024 ‘EU Migration Pact.’

While officially, the U.S. government recognizes Ceuta and Melilla as sovereign Spanish territory, voices in the USA and Israel have increasingly encouraged Morocco to claim the enclaves.

Back in 2019, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s son Yair tweeted a map of Ceuta and Melilla, saying, ‘Dear Arabs and Muslims. Want to free occupied Arab Islamic lands? Here’s a good start!’

One of the causes of such rhetoric is Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez. In the past three years he has been a particular thorn in the side of the USA and Israel, emerging as a leading global critic of both countries. Thus, Sánchez has imposed arms and settlement trade embargoes on Israel and refused to allow U.S.-flagged cargo ships carrying weapons for Israel, as well as an Israeli warship, to dock or refuel at Spanish ports. More recently, the Spanish PM refused to allow the USA to use bases on Spanish soil for military operations in the war with Iran.

But the Ceuta incursion unleashed a whole new level of rhetorical fire from Israeli and U.S. officials and right-wing commentators. They jumped on the incident to blame Sánchez’s left-wing government for failing to protect its borders from African migrants, to mock its ‘colony’ in Africa, and even to urge Morocco to overtake the enclaves.

Whatever the immediate precipitating factor for the migrant incursion, it has served as a useful political cudgel for Israel and the United States.

The new migration blackmail now has impacts that extend far beyond the borders of Spain or Europe, just as the U.S.-Israeli conflict over Palestine now reaches deep into the politics of African and Latin American states.

America and Israel have essentially honed on Spain their new diplomatic rhetoric weapon that can be used against States who have migration problems with their neighbors. That is, against virtually every country in Europe and elsewhere that dares to embark on an independent policy disregarding the will of Trump, who is trying on the role of the global hegemon.

Original publication: https://responsiblestatecraft.org/morocco-spain-migrants-israel/