Algeria Confuses The Last Speech Of Morocco’s King

The word “Algeria” completely disappeared from the last speech of the Moroccan monarch, King Mohammed VI, but allusions to the eastern neighbour were strongly present, through some of the descriptions that officials in the Makhzen regime used to chant on such occasions, such as “enemies of the territorial integrity”.

In the speech delivered by the Moroccan monarch three weeks ago on the occasion of the “Throne Day”, the name of Algeria was repeated on his tongue ten full times, but he avoided referring to it directly in his last speech even once, preferring to use the allusion… Why then?

The structure of the previous speech of the King of Morocco was based on a basic demand in the form of an appeal, which is the opening of the land borders closed for nearly a quarter of a century, and the rebuilding of the crisis bilateral relations, within the framework of what he called “the diplomacy of the outstretched hand”, but the result was not what he had hoped.

However, President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, during his last meeting with the national media, did not respond to the Moroccan offer, which came in the form of an initiative isolated from the general context of the crisis of bilateral relations, when he said: “Algeria did not receive a response from Morocco regarding the clarifications it requested from Rabat about what did the Moroccan ambassador to the United Nations do?

The representative of Morocco at the United Nation, Omar Hilale, distributed a document to representatives of the member states of the Non-Aligned Movement, calling for what he called “the right of the Kabylie people’s self-determination”, the incident that caused Algeria to withdraw its ambassador from Morocco, and demanded the latter to provide clarifications of what happened.

If the Moroccan monarch tried to cover up what Omar Hilal had done in New York, by ignoring this incident, which was described in Algeria as “dangerous”, this did not convince the officials in Algeria, who decided, in an advanced step, to reconsider relationships with the neighbour. According to the decisions of the last meeting of the Supreme Security Council, which was chaired by President Abdelmadjid Tebboune.

The other event that convinced the Algerians not to be serious about Morocco’s “outstretched hand” was the harassment by the Zionist entity’s foreign minister, Yair Lapid, during his visit to Morocco, accusing Algeria of working within the framework of the Iranian axis, which the Algerian Foreign Ministry considered in a statement as “false statements” that were led by the Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita, and came in implementation of the desire of his new ally in the Middle East.

While the Western Sahara issue was absent in the first speech of the King of Morocco, it returned strongly in the speech of the so-called “revolution of the king and the people”, by talking about the territorial integrity of his country, knowing that it is one of the causes of tension in bilateral relationships, which means that Rabat has become convinced that there has been no response by Algeria, which was the reason why the king directed his compass towards Spain and France, so that he might find someone to listen to him there.