Last week, a petition submitted to Morocco's parliament drew an outsized reaction across the Arab and Muslim world. The proposal, which calls for citizenship to be granted to descendants of Moroccan Jews, quickly went viral, generating equal parts curiosity and controversy. But to understand what this petition truly represents, one must look beyond the headlines and into the deeper currents of history, identity, and geopolitics that it stirs.
What the petition actually says
First, one thing that the viral coverage largely obscures is that this is neither a government initiative nor a parliamentary bill. The petition was submitted by a private citizen, El Houssain Benmessaoud, under Moroccan law that allows individuals and organisations to propose legislation on any subject. To compel parliamentary debate, a petition must collect 20,000 signatures — a threshold this one is far from reaching. Moroccan government spokesman Mustafa Paytas has since distanced the state from the proposal.
Were it ever to reach the floor, the petition would debate extending nationality to Moroccan Jews who previously renounced it, along with their children and grandchildren. Such a measure could, in theory, grant 500,000 Israeli citizens a Moroccan passport. Crucially, however, such a law would be largely redundant. Existing Moroccan legal frameworks already allow second- and third-generation Moroccan Jews to reclaim citizenship.
Rabat’s Romance with Israel
Morocco's relationship with Israel has undergone a significant transformation since 2020, when Rabat normalised ties with the Zionist state under the Abraham Accords, in exchange for Washington's recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara. That diplomatic coup against neighbouring Algeria came at a political cost domestically, given the historically strong pro-Palestinian sympathies among ordinary Moroccans.
Since then, the Moroccan government has had to soft gently. While it joined calls for a ceasefire and a two-state solution during the genocide in Gaza to appease public opinion, it continued deepening commercial and security cooperation with Israel. Interestingly, both sides signed a joint military work plan at a third Joint Military Committee meeting in Tel Aviv earlier this year.
Moroccan Jewish Community
The more profound story here is that of the Moroccan Jewish community itself — one of the oldest and most layered in the world.
The earliest Jewish presence in the region dates to 70 CE, when the Roman destruction of Jerusalem sent waves of Jewish refugees westward. Over centuries, these communities formed relationships with Amazigh tribes and adapted to life under successive dynasties. Under Islamic rule, they were recognised as Ahl al-Kitāb (People of the Book), tolerated and, more often than not, permitted to maintain their synagogues, many of which still stand today. Moses ibn Maimon, one of the most influential Torah scholars in Jewish history, lived in Morocco between 1159 and 1165.
The second, larger wave came after 1492, when the Alhambra Decree expelled Jews from Spain. The Sephardic Jews who fled to Morocco found in North Africa the refuge that Christian Europe had denied them. Fez, in particular, became a centre of Jewish scholarship and commerce. It was not so different from the broader pattern of Islamic civilisation, offering protection to Jews at precisely the moments when Christendom was persecuting them.
Before 1948, Morocco was home to approximately 270,000 Jews. Today, fewer than 3,000 remain.
The Zionist rupture
What happened in between is a story that deserves to be told. The mass emigration of Moroccan Jews to Israel was much more of an engineered work rather than a longing for the holy land. Operation Yachin, a covert programme negotiated between the Mossad and Moroccan authorities following the accession of King Hassan II in 1961, facilitated the departure of nearly 100,000 Moroccan Jews. Approximately 95,000 had already left between 1952 and 1960, many through unofficial channels amid restrictions on migration to the occupied land.
The Zionist project required bodies for a state that needed to assert demographic dominance over a land it was simultaneously displacing. Moroccan Jews were, therefore, in a very real sense, mobilised for this project.
Today, a growing number of their descendants are reconsidering that displacement. Since October 7, 2023, there has been a notable uptick in Moroccan Jews seeking to reconnect with Morocco. Among young, working-class Israelis of Moroccan origin, the rediscovery of Moroccan roots is becoming something of a cultural movement. One senses in this is far beyond nostalgia; it is a search for safety, which Zionism promised but failed to deliver.
What history tells us
The Moroccan Jewish story is, in microcosm, a refutation of the foundational Zionist claim that Jews could only be safe in a Jewish state. For centuries, in Morocco and across the Muslim world, Jewish communities lived, prayed, traded, and argued — not in perfect harmony, but in a relationship of regulated coexistence that afforded them far more security than they ever found in Christian Europe.
It was Zionism, not Islam, that ultimately strained those relationships, as the regional politics of a settler-colonial project began to poison the wells of centuries-old coexistence across the Arab world.
A petition about citizenship, then, is indeed a reckoning with history, and with what it might mean when an ideology fails you.
*The views expressed in this content are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of İdrakpost.
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