Morocco cancels next month’s Negev Forum
The gathering of foreign ministers from Israel, the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, Egypt and the US was originally slated to take place in March, but has been delayed several times amid escalating tension ...
(TIMES OF ISRAEL) – Morocco has decided to cancel plans to host the second ministerial gathering of the Negev Forum next month in response to Israeli moves to significantly expand its settlements in the West Bank, a US and an Israeli official told Times of Israel last week.
The gathering of foreign ministers from Israel, the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, Egypt and the US was originally slated to take place in March, but has been delayed several times amid escalating tension between Israelis and Palestinians as well as discomfort among Arab participants over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new hardline government.
Rabat had agreed to finally hold the meeting in mid-July. A date had not been finalised but it was “pretty locked up”, according to the US official speaking on condition of anonymity.
But then came a pair of Israeli settlement moves that derailed the process again, the US official said.
The first was an announcement from Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich that the Defence Ministry body in charge of authorising settlement construction would be meeting next week to advance plans for 4500 new settlement homes.
Hours later, the Netanyahu government passed a resolution that gives practically all control over planning approval for construction in West Bank settlements to Smotrich, a settler and an impassioned advocate of the nationalist movement.
The decision approved at the Sunday morning cabinet meeting, which took immediate effect, also dramatically expedites and eases the process for expanding existing West Bank settlements and retroactively legalises some illegal outposts.
Israeli efforts to further entrench its presence in the West Bank are also considered an obstacle to further normalisation deals in the Middle East, including with Saudi Arabia.
The US official said that the settlement moves might not directly impact the Biden administration’s efforts to broker a normalisation agreement between Israel and the Saudis, but added, “Does the whole atmosphere get tainted by all the stuff? Absolutely.
“I would be singularly focused on doing absolutely nothing that would prevent the Saudi deal from getting done, but they haven’t been able to do that.”
The Moroccan Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.
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