The reports that Israel and Morocco will soon see a thaw in relations that would result in direct flights from the countries are fake news, a diplomatic source in Rabat told Israel Hayom on Sunday.
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The reports, which were denied by the source, wrongly claimed that the two countries were close to establishing full diplomatic ties and that Israeli carriers would be able to fly through Moroccan airspace.
This is the second time in recent weeks in which officials in Rabat have had to shoot down reports on an emerging deal with Israel. Some three weeks ago, Morocco's Prime Minister Saad Dine El Otmani said a normalization deal was not in the offing. "We refuse to normalize relations with the Zionist entity because it will only encourage it to violate the rights of the Palestinian people," he said.
Rabat's official stance is that the conflict should be resolved through the two-state solution, with east Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state. Israel and Morocco briefly had official relations following the signing of the 1993 Oslo Accords, but they ended after the peace process collapsed in 2000. According to an adviser to the prime minister who spoke with Israel Hayom last month, a deal to normalize relations would have to be tied to American recognition of Morocco's territorial claims in Western Sahara.
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