Morocco-Israel Alliance Alarms EU, Poses Strategic Challenge for Germany

"The alliance between Rabat and Tel Aviv is a powerful shock not only for Germany, but for the entire European Union, as it represents a threat to its interests and a direct threat to itself in the short and medium term," Isabel Werenfels, head of the North Africa and Middle East intelligence office at the BND, is said to have stated in a report from the "Bundesnachrichtendienst". According to her, the Israeli-Moroccan agreement will exhaust Germany. "Especially since for the mining markets, for which we have defined a strategy since 2019 when we had concluded an agreement with several of our companies to operate in Africa, and we were certain that they would clearly begin to penetrate this large market in 2020," Isabel Werenfels is said to have emphasized. But the Covid-19 pandemic would have slowed down this project.

"The entry of an economic power like Israel in partnership with an emerging power like Morocco will not even leave us the space for expansion in a mineral-rich region that the German industry needs, because our action has not taken place with the required speed," Isabel Werenfens, who holds a doctorate in Algeria, is said to have continued, suggesting access to Africa via Algiers. Algeria offers Germany "all the privileges and facilities in the economic and even political fields," Isabel Werenfels is said to have affirmed.

In a correspondence dated March 1, 2021, Nasser Bourita had called on the former head of government, Saâdeddine El Othmani and the other members of the government to suspend any contact, interaction or action with both his embassy in Rabat and the German cooperation organizations and political foundations "due to the deep misunderstandings with the Federal Republic of Germany on the fundamental issues of the kingdom". The points of friction remain Germany’s position on the Sahara, its interference in Morocco’s internal affairs, the exclusion of Rabat from negotiations on the future of Libya at a conference organized in Berlin in January 2020 and the recent Transparency International report on corruption.