July 26, 1999
In Honoring Hassan, Israelis Bare Intrigue in Cause of Peace
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In Scenes of Tumult, Moroccans Bury King
Issue in Depth: The Mideast Peace Process
By DEBORAH SONTAG
ERUSALEM -- The Israeli media devoted itself Sunday to
the decades of often covert close
relations between Israel and King
Hassan II of Morocco, paying tribute
to an Arab leader who, it was often
repeated, started life with a Jewish
wet nurse.
In newspaper columns and on radio chat shows, Israeli leaders and
Moroccan-born Israelis traded tales
of mysticism and intrigue, involving
ghosts, Mossad agents and wig-clad
Israeli politicians flying incognito to
clandestine rendezvous at the palace
in Fez.
As when King Hussein of Jordan
died early this year, Israelis testified
to their deep respect for an Arab
leader who took the regional political
risk of forging a relationship with
Israel and playing a progenitor's role
in the peace effort.
The top echelon of Israeli officials,
including Prime Minister Ehud Barak and the Moroccan-born Foreign
Minister, David Levy, flew to Rabat
for King Hassan's funeral, a testimonial in itself. Starting with the arrival
of the first dignitaries, the funeral
proceedings were broadcast live on
Israeli television for hours. The
newspaper Maariv devoted its first
13 pages to King Hassan.
Leaders of the large Moroccan
Jewish community in Israel, whose
emigration was facilitated -- and
later regretted -- by the late King,
called for seven days of mourning.
"During that time, we will not wed
children and we won't have bar mitzvahs to show our respect and affection in the depths of hearts for the
King," said Sam Ben Sheetrit, a community leader.
Although full diplomatic relations
between Israel and Morocco still do
not exist, Israeli history is studded
with accounts of high-level secret
visits to Morocco that proved pivotal
to the peace process.
The late Moshe Dayan, the late
Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres
were among the Israeli statesmen
who were disguised and flown there
in King Hassan's private planes at
critical moments.
Dayan's visit as Foreign Minister to Fez in 1977 established the
foundation for an Egyptian-Israeli
peace accord and paved the way for
Anwar el-Sadat's historic visit to Jerusalem later that year. Peres's
first secret trip, in 1978, laid the
groundwork for a dialogue with the
Palestine Liberation Organization; a
subsequent one brought him together
with Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian
leader, to overcome a moment of
crisis in 1995.
"The King's political goal was to
bring about peace in the Middle East
and to build a region about which the
prophets would not be embarrassed,
one which would not limp behind
modern progress," Peres, the
former Prime Minister and current
Minister for Regional Development,
wrote in Maariv.
Shlomo Ben-Ami, the Internal Security Minister and a historian who
was born in Tangier, said that King
Hassan was a dovish statesman doubly inspired by pragmatic concerns,
principally the desire to forge closer
relations with the West, and by a
historically rooted vision for a productive Jewish-Arab relationship.
"He was motivated by a religious-political philosophy whereby the
meeting between Judaism and Islam, as proven by the glorious period
of Jewish influence in Spain, is seen
as a source of positive creativity,"
Ben-Ami said.
As revealed Sunday, lore in the Moroccan Jewish community says that
King Hassan II was visited by a
ghost a few weeks after his father
died and he inherited the throne 38
years ago. The ghost advised him "to
let the chickens out of the coop."
According to the legend, King Hassan summoned a rabbi to explain the
apparition's message. The rabbi told
him, the lore says, that his father
wanted him to let the Jews leave
Morocco if they so desired.
King Hassan's father, King Mohammed V, had agreed to permit
organized emigration to Israel after
the tragic sinking of a boat of emigrants, the Egoz, in 1961. King Hassan widened the agreement, allowing
Moroccans to sell their properties
before leaving.
At the same time, Israeli newspapers said today, King Hassan allowed Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, to set up a station in
Morocco and develop close ties with
Moroccan security.
Israeli intelligence experts have
said that Mossad helped protect King
Hassan from assassination attempts
and helped him assassinate a political rival in Paris, but these specific
allegations were never officially confirmed.
"Broadly speaking, there has been
a mutually beneficial Moroccan-Israeli relationship going back several
decades with an intelligence connection and a Mossad presence in Morocco," said Joseph Alpher, a former
Mossad official and director of the
American-Jewish Committee's office in Israel. "For Morocco, it provided the King with additional intelligence and know-how to stabilize his
regime. For the Israelis, it was good
as a window into the Arab world."
The relationship survived Morocco's dispatch of troops to the Golan
Heights to fight Israelis in 1973, when
King Hassan joined the rest of the
Arab world.
On high levels, other Arab countries knew of and tolerated King Hassan's relationship with Israel. It
served its purpose, and allowed Morocco, geographically distant from
the immediate conflicts, to play a
key role behind the scenes in the
Middle East.
