Morocco and Israel have agreed to expand their military cooperation to include intelligence, air defense and electronic warfare, the Royal Armed Forces Command said in a statement on Tuesday after a joint committee meeting in Rabat. Israeli Defense Ministry Dror Shalom, chaired in Rabat on Monday and Tuesday first meeting of the committee monitoring Moroccan-Israeli defense cooperation.
The two officials agreed to “further strengthen this cooperation and expand it to include other areas, especially intelligence, air defense and electronic warfare,” the statement said.
The meeting also touched on various areas of military cooperation, including logistics and training, as well as the “acquisition and modernization of equipment.”
The two countries entered into a security cooperation agreement in November 2021, angering neighboring Algeria, which severed diplomatic relations with Rabat in the summer of that year in the context of serious tensions between them over the Western Sahara dispute.
The normalization agreement between Morocco and Israel at the end of 2020 included the recognition by the United States of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara, which is being contested by the Algerian-backed Polisario Front.
The security agreement between Rabat and Tel Aviv also included “cooperation in the field of defense industry and technology transfer”, while individual media sources indicated about two years ago that Morocco acquired advanced Israeli weapons, including military marches, without any official confirmation from Rabat. .
