Demonstrators take part in a demonstration in support of Palestinians and Lebanese in downtown Rabat, Morocco, on ctober 6, 2024. — Reuters
Tens of thousands of Moroccans protested in Rabat on Sunday in support of Palestinians and against normalisation of ties with Israel a day ahead of the October 7 attack anniversary.
Demonstrators waved Palestinian flags and brandished signs denouncing the kingdom’s 2020 normalisation with Israel, amid chants of “Resistance does not die” and “The people want an end to normalisation”.
“We consider Palestine to be a national cause,” Khadija Mokhtari, a 56-year-old retiree living in the capital, told AFP at the protest near parliament.
She said she joined the protest to demonstrate against “flagrant injustice, Israeli killings and the genocide” against Palestinians.
Another protester, Noufissa Souad, 39, said: “They are going to kill the entire Palestinian people for their land.”
“We must stop relations with Israel because we are hand in hand with the enemy,” she added, and said Arab and Muslim leaders must speak out.
Morocco established official ties with Israel in 2020 as part of the US-led Abraham Accords.
The North African kingdom has officially called for “the immediate, complete and permanent halt to the Israeli war on Gaza”, but has not publicly discussed reversing normalisation.
Sunday’s rally was organised by the National Action Group for Palestine, which brings together leftist groups and the Islamist Justice and Development Party.
It came a day before the first anniversary of the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed at least 41,870 people in Gaza, the majority of them civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. The United Nations has said the figures are reliable.
Protesters also waved the Lebanese flag and held portraits of slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, killed in an Israeli strike on southern Beirut on September 27, and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, killed in Tehran in July.