Lazar Berman is The Times of Israel s diplomatic reporter
Illustrative: Iraqi men stand on an Israeli flag and hold a banner depicting Iran s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as they take part in a parade marking al-Quds (Jerusalem) Day in Baghdad, July 1, 2016. (AFP Photo/Ahmad Al-Rubaye)
The Foreign Ministry maintains some form of contact with almost all Arab countries, including ones officially designated as “enemy states” like Iraq, a senior Foreign Ministry official said Tuesday.
“Over the last twenty years, the Foreign Ministry was always in touch with almost all the players in the Arab World,” said the outgoing director of the Foreign Ministry’s Middle East Division, Haim Regev, during a briefing in Jerusalem.
3. Still Makhlouf from the mellah: Unlike the other normalization deals, the one with Morocco holds extra meaning for many in Israel, with a large and thriving community of Moroccan immigrants and descendants, many of whom still travel there regularly.
“As opposed to Egypt and Jordan, which signed peace treaties with Israel decades ago, and in contrast to the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan, three Arab nations that normalized relations with Israel this year, Morocco and Israel have a profound and ancient Jewish connection, and the Moroccan Jewish community, though small, still thrives today,” writes Raphael Ahren in ToI.
“While Israeli tourists have begun discovering the Gulf only very recently, they have been flocking to Rabat, Marrakech, Casablanca, Tangiers and Fez via third countries for many years. Once the two countries establish diplomatic relations and open direct air-links, that number can be expected to increase dramatically,” he adds.