Morocco’s Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita used a joint interview with RFI and France 24 to lay out, in blunt terms, where Rabat stands on the kingdom’s most sensitive files: the Palestinian question, the Western Sahara dispute, and the increasingly strained relationship with Algeria.
Asked whether normalized ties with Israel had softened Morocco’s historic support for the Palestinian cause, Bourita was unequivocal. « Relations with Israel have not changed, and will not change, Morocco’s position on the Palestinian issue, » he said, arguing that deeper commercial and military cooperation with Tel Aviv could, if anything, be leveraged to advance Palestinian rights rather than undercut them. He reaffirmed the kingdom’s continued backing for a two-state solution and an independent Palestinian state.
On Algeria, the minister chose his words carefully but left little ambiguity. He described Algiers’ recent positions as increasingly unilateral and excessive, while stressing that Morocco has no interest in escalation and refuses to let bilateral disputes dictate its own trajectory. Bourita ruled out any military confrontation, saying Rabat would rather focus on whatever common ground remains between the two neighbors.
It was on Western Sahara, however, that Bourita’s remarks carried the most weight. He described Morocco’s presence in its southern provinces as an act of legitimate self-defense, and reiterated the kingdom’s commitment to a negotiated settlement under United Nations auspices, built around the autonomy plan under Moroccan sovereignty. He also suggested that Algeria’s own posturing on the issue exposes it as a central party to the dispute, contradicting Algiers’ official line that it is merely a concerned observer with no direct stake.
Bourita closed by turning to the African Union and Libya, criticizing a handful of countries, South Africa chief among them, for trying to impose a common continental line on Israel’s observer status at the AU. He noted that numerous African states already maintain their own ties with Israel, a point he used to push back against what he cast as selective outrage.
The interview lands at a moment when Moroccan diplomacy is running on several tracks simultaneously, shoring up Western alliances, managing a fraught regional rivalry with Algeria, and pressing, without pause, its case for sovereignty over the Western Sahara on the world stage.
