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Israel
Morocco
Morocco has been noted for its generally good relations with
its own Jewish community, which in 1988 numbered approximately
18,000; in 1948 there had been about 250,000 Jews in Morocco.
Over the years discreet meetings have occurred between Moroccan
and Israeli leaders. Beginning in 1976, King Hassan II began to
mediate between Arab and Israeli leaders. Then Prime Minister
Yitzhak Rabin reportedly made a secret visit to Morocco in 1976,
leading to a September 1977 secret meeting between King Hassan
and Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan. King Hassan also played a role
in the Egyptian-Israeli contacts that led to the 1978 Camp David
Accords. In July 1978, and again in March 1981, Peres, as opposition
leader, made secret trips to Morocco. In May 1984, thirty-five
prominent Israelis of Moroccan origin attended a conference in
Rabat. This meeting was followed by an official visit in May 1985
by Avraham Katz-Oz, Israel's deputy minister of agriculture, to
discuss possible agricultural cooperation between the two countries.
In August 1986, Moroccan agricultural specialists and journalists
reportedly visited Israel, and Haim Corfu, Israel's minister of
transport, attended a transportation conference in Morocco. On
July 22 and 23, 1986, Prime Minister Peres met King Hassan at
the king's palace in Ifrane. This was the first instance of a
public meeting between an Arab leader and an Israeli prime minister
since the Egyptian-Israeli meetings of the late 1970s. Hassan
and Peres, however, were unable to agree on ways to resolve the
Palestinian dimension of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Data as of December 1988
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