Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid left on Wednesday for his first official visit to Morocco, seven months after the normalization of relations between Rabat and the Hebrew state.
Read also: Israel will reopen a diplomatic mission in Morocco in the coming days
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Take off for a historic visit to Morocco!
Yaïr Lapid wrote on Twitter, posting a photo of the departures screen of the airline El Al. Morocco is the fourth Arab country to announce in 2020 the normalization of its relations with Israel - after the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan - in return for an American recognition of its “
sovereignty
” over the former Spanish colony of Western Sahara.
Yaïr Lapid is expected to open a diplomatic representation in Rabat and meet his Moroccan counterpart, Nasser Bourita.
He is also expected to visit the Beth-El Synagogue in Casablanca on his two-day trip, Israel's foreign ministry said.
The largest Jewish community in North Africa
Morocco's Jewish community is the largest in North Africa (around 3,000 people) and the approximately 700,000 Israelis of Moroccan descent have often kept very strong ties with their country of origin.
However, the Palestinian cause is mobilizing civil society in Morocco, while some far-left political parties and Islamists remain opposed to the normalization of relations between their country and the Hebrew state.
Read also: Launch of the first direct commercial line between Israel and Morocco
Israel and Morocco had already maintained official relations in the 1990s, before the outbreak of the second intifada (Palestinian uprising) in 2000. This first official visit comes just over two weeks after the launch of direct commercial flights between Israel and the Morocco.
Yair Lapid's visit to Rabat follows a trip to the United Arab Emirates in June, where he inaugurated an Israeli embassy in Abu Dhabi.
The Palestinians condemned the normalization agreements between the Arab states and Israel, seeing them as a betrayal of their cause.