Israeli Airline Israir to Launch Direct Tel Aviv-Marrakech Flights in July

The non-stop flight, the first of which will be for next month, will last six hours and will take place five times a week. Israir’s vice president of marketing, Gil Stav, says: "We estimate that demand will be high and that hundreds of thousands of passengers from Israel will visit the destination as part of vacation packages or organized trips."

This relaunch is in line with the normalized diplomatic relations in December with the United States as mediator, which also includes Washington’s recognition of Morocco’s sovereignty over the Sahara.

It should be remembered that Morocco was for centuries a hospitable land that welcomed one of the most prosperous Jewish communities in North Africa and the Middle East until the founding of Israel in 1948. An estimated quarter of a million left Morocco for Israel from 1948 to 1964.

However, there are still about 3,000 Jews in Morocco, while hundreds of thousands of Israelis claim Moroccan origin.

Moroccan Tourism Minister Nadia Fettah Alaoui said in March that she was expecting a flow of Israeli tourists (200,000 visitors) in the first year following the resumption of direct flights. This compares to around 13 million foreign tourists per year in total before the pandemic. Tourism revenues fell by 53.8% to 36.3 billion dirhams ($3.8 billion) in 2020.

Israir Airlines says it also hopes to start flights to Morocco in July and is awaiting final approvals.