Israeli presence disturbs Benkirane government

Israeli attendance of events in Morocco is making the Benkirane government uncomfortable. Following Israeli Brunstein’s attendance of the Justice and Development Party (PJD) conference, the political party issued an apology for inviting Israeli officials. After members of the PJD boycotted the meeting of the Parliamentary Association of the Mediterranean, members of the same party found themselves in an another embarrassing situation when they realised the presence of Majali Wahba, vice president of the Israeli Knesset at a seminar about the energy challenges in the Euro-Med Sphere last week. Another PJD member of parliament, Reda Benkhaldoun, regretted his decision to attend opening ceremony of the meeting - left when he realised Israeli officials were attending the event. National support associations to Iraq and Palestine severely condemned what they described as a hateful normalisation act, after the advisor’s council welcomed one of the major and most notorious Zionist figures. The associations demanded the Moroccan government to start a serious investigation in all the details of inviting, hosting and issuing entrance visas to Wahba to take the required measures against those who facilitated his entrance.  They also urged the government to put laws into place in order to criminalise normalisation with the Zionist entity National Secretary Ben Khaldoun was praised for withdrawing from the meeting after discovering Wahba’s presence. PJD’s parliamentarian Reda Benkhaldoun said that he was surprised to find out about Israeli Knesset vice president’s presence in the meeting and said: “I only found out about his presence at the beginning of the meeting, so I listened to the royal address then left the place.” The seminar agenda included a visit to solar energy sites in Ouarzazate but Benkhaldoun said that he did not attend the visits, and preferred to stay in his hotel room.