The Secretary General of the Justice and Development Party (PJD), Abdelilah Benkirane, rebuked his predecessor for having signed the normalization agreement between the Moroccan government and Israel in December 2020. In a meeting of the General Secretariat this weekend, he declared that the Hebrew state was a country with which «no one can deal» and which cannot be trusted by any party. «Unfortunately, it was our former Secretary General who signed the normalization. We did not agree with him, but we understood his position. Personally, I am still waiting for him the circumstances under which he enacted this treaty», Benkirane said. According to him, the Islamist party «never accepted normalization and will never accept it, even more so now, because it cannot be done with hyenas». «Those who kill people, strip their skin, and throw them in the streets have surpassed the acts of hyenas», he denounced. In his speech, Abdelilah Benkirane, former head of government, questioned whether if one can «trust and deal with people like that», specifying that he refers «it is indeed the Zionist state and not all Jews». Moreover, he criticized «the inability of Sunni countries to stand up to Israel». In the context of the war waged by the Israeli occupation on the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023, Benkirane explicitly called for a return to the Abraham Accords, which allowed for the resumption of diplomatic ties between Rabat and Tel Aviv. «It is time to put an end to this story of Morocco's normalization with the horrible criminal entity», he affirmed in November 2023, in a speech. In March 2023, Benkirane was reprimanded following the PJD's incursion into Morocco's foreign policy. In a statement, the royal cabinet indicated that «Morocco's position on the Palestinian issue is irreversible», reminding the Islamist party that «the Kingdom's foreign policy is a prerogative» of King Mohammed VI. This reaction came following a PJD statement, in which the latter accused the Moroccan Minister of Foreign Affairs of «defending the Zionist entity in some African and European meetings, at a time when the Israeli occupation continues its criminal aggression».
