People walk on a street, in Rabat, Morocco. Photo: Nawalbennani via Wikimedia Commons.

JNS.org – Morocco’s royal court on Monday condemned comments by a leading Islamist opposition party that accused the authorities of defending Israel.

“The general secretariat of the PJD [the Justice and Development Party] recently published a declaration containing irresponsible excesses and dangerous approximations regarding relations between the Kingdom of Morocco and the State of Israel,” the royal court said in a statement, AFP reported.

“Morocco’s position towards the Palestinian question is irreversible,” the royal court continued.

“The kingdom’s international relations cannot be the subject of blackmail by anyone or for any consideration whatsoever, particularly in the current complex global context. The instrumentalization of the kingdom’s foreign policy in a domestic partisan agenda thus constitutes a dangerous, unacceptable precedent,” it added.

The PJD, an Islamist party led by former Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane, issued a statement last week in which it “deplored…recent positions taken by the foreign minister [Nasser Bourita] in which he appeared to defend the Zionist entity [Israel] in African and European meetings.”

It claimed this came as Israeli forces were committing “criminal aggression against our Palestinian brothers.”

Morocco normalized relations with Israel in December 2020 as part of the Abraham Accords, a series of US-brokered deals between Muslim countries and the Jewish state.

Those agreements broke with decades of Arab consensus that formal ties should only be established with Israel in the event of a peace agreement that gives the Palestinians their own state.