Palestine and Western Sahara: Two intersecting causes and resistance paths, By Oubi Bouchraya Bachir

The actual challenges and the pressure of the current pivotal juncture that the two causes are going through and the deepening and diversifying aspects of the alliance and joint conspiracy between Israel and Morocco, requires that Palestinians and Sahrawis raise their hands together and march jointly towards achieving freedom and independence. Only together can we exploit the opportunities that exist in the common enemy’s camp.

The Palestinian cause has strongly returned to the forefront of events since 7 October 2023, in the context of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood in the Gaza Strip. Regardless of the differences of opinion on the move and its consequences, the operation managed, in a short time, to abort the shameful Arab normalisation process with Israel, which was dangerously close to toppling the most economically and religiously symbolic Arab state into its trap.

About eight months later, and despite the heavy price and horrible war of extermination, the world agrees today that for peace to be lasting, there must be justice. Circumventing the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and the establishment of their independent state through the “Oslo” process, would not have established the desired peace, but led to the opposite – more injustice, settlement and killings.

The 7th of October was the inevitable result of the international community’s inability to assume its responsibility and fulfill its obligations towards the Palestinian people, including its favouritism towards Israel and the permanent impunity of the Zionist state. Today, there is an unprecedented international move to push for the recognition and full membership of the Palestinian state at the United Nations. The push is reflected in the isolation of Israel’s remaining minority supporters within the UN Security Council and the UN General Assembly, especially during the votes in the Council on 19 April and in the General Assembly on 10 May.

The echo of the Al-Aqsa Flood has been noticed also in Western Sahara. It seems now that a gradual awareness has begun to form among international actors about the danger of the continued blockage of the UN settlement process. This shift was marked in Western Sahara on 13 November 2020, the day of the resumption of armed conflict and the collapse of the ceasefire. In fact, 13 November was nothing more than the Palestinian 7th of October. Both moments were caused by growing frustration, and it came after the Sahrawis were fed up with the UN Security Council’s inability to impose a just solution and fulfill its obligations towards the Sahrawi people. Also favouritism played its part, as it encouraged the Kingdom of Morocco to continue obstructing and rebelling against all the UN resolutions with total impunity, just as is the case with Israel. Similar to 7 October in Palestine, 13 November in Western Sahara also led to the abandonment of a negative spiral of UN-led processes, which was gradually moving towards bypassing the Sahrawi people’s right to self-determination and establishing an approach supportive of Morocco’s autonomy proposal. A proposal that was stillborn and is, in the end, nothing more than the “Sahrawi version” of the “Oslo process” to legitimise the occupation.

The current intersection between the two resistance paths in Palestine and Western Sahara, resulting from the restoration of the field initiative by the two peoples through 13 November 2020 and 7 October 2023, is a manifestation of the similarity, sometimes even congruence, between the two causes, despite the different historical and regional contexts. These similarities include:

1. Claiming Historical and Religious Rights: In both cases, the colonial project is based on claiming historical and religious rights, as the State of Israel in Palestine is “the embodiment of a biblical divine promise,” and in the depth of the Zionist doctrine, the borders of Israel do not stop at the known borders of Palestine, but extend beyond them to include all the historical geography of the Jews (Greater Israel), which reaches as far as Medina and Khaybar (Saudi Arabia). Morocco also bases its expansionist project on alleged historical claims, claiming the political and religious sovereignty of the Moroccan sultans over the territory, which was refuted by the International Court of Justice in its advisory opinion (16 October 1975). As in the case of Israel, the map of territorial claims at the heart of the Makhzen doctrine does not stop at the borders of Western Sahara, but extends to Senegal in the south, passing through all neighbouring countries (the Greater Maghreb).
2. Military Occupation: According to international law, Israel is militarily occupying the Palestinian territories (1967 borders) and is urged to withdraw from them, based on a large number of resolutions, most notably UN Security Council Resolution 242 (1967), which serves as a milestone. The same applies to Morocco as an occupying power, which is drawn from the UN Security Council’s call for Morocco to immediately withdraw the participants of the Green March from the territory (380/1975) and the UN General Assembly resolution 35/19 (1980) describing Morocco as an occupying power in Western Sahara. The two military occupying powers, Israel and Morocco, are obliged to apply the requirements of international humanitarian law in Palestine and Western Sahara.
3. The Right to Self-determination: The exercise of this right has been consistently and systematically recognised by the international community, especially since the UN General Assembly Resolution 3236 (1974) on the “Rights of the Palestinian People” and since the mid-1960s for the Sahrawi people. The right to self-determination and its free exercise without foreign interference is the only way to achieve a peaceful, just, and final settlement.
4. The Legitimate and Sole Representative: By the same Resolution 3236 (1974) of the UN General Assembly, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) was recognised as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people and was granted an observer status at the UN. The decision was based on a resolution adopted the same year by the regional organisation (the Arab League), as stipulated by UN regulations. This status was subsequently maintained, even after the PLO was replaced with “Palestine” by Resolution 177/43 (1988). As for the Polisario Front, it became clear to the world that the Sahrawi people felt identified with and represented by the organisation when the fact-finding mission to Western Sahara sent by the UN General Assembly on 12 October 1975 issued its report. This position was subsequently, and till this day, confirmed by UN General Assembly Resolutions 37/34 (1979) and 19/35 (1980), and by UN Security Council, African Union and European Court of Justice resolutions, all of which confirm Polisario Front’s status as the sole and legitimate representative of the Sahrawi people.
5. Refugees and Settlements: In both cases, a large number of the Palestinian and Sahrawi peoples were forced to leave their countries to escape the campaign of repression and extermination that accompanied their invasions. Today, many Palestinians and Sahrawis are refugees around the world, especially in neighbouring countries. Their dignified return to their homelands is an essential point in any peaceful settlement process. However, and since Day One, Israel and the Kingdom of Morocco have been on missions to change the demographic composition of the two territories by adopting brutal policies of colonisation and the forcible appropriation of the land of the two peoples. The creation of settlements is a crime under international humanitarian law, yet the two occupying powers continue to expand and encourage their policies in this regard. Pertaining to Western Sahara, in particular, over the last five years, Morocco has increased the pace of this policy, forcibly expropriating Sahrawis from their lands, launching major investment projects to encourage demographic colonisation and linking the economy of some European countries, especially concerning renewable energy, to the occupation as a reality. In both cases, the Sahrawi and Palestinian peoples have been subjected to a policy of discrimination, racial segregation and systematic impoverishment.
6. The Separation Wall: In Western Sahara, a wall was built by the Kingdom of Morocco in the early 1980s to protect the cities placed under occupation, in response to the Sahrawi army being able to move the war into Morocco proper. A military wall more than two thousand kilometres long, guarded by about 160,000 military personnel, with pits, barbed wire and surveillance radars, has put Western Sahara on the list of the ten countries most contaminated with mines as a result of Morocco’s planting of about 10 million mines of various types along this belt. Now, the berm divides the territory and its people into two parts and constitutes, in itself, a full-fledged humanitarian crime. In Palestine, Israel started building its wall in 2002 during the Al-Aqsa Intifada, and by the end of 2006, it had reached 402 kilometres of fences and patrol roads. It runs along a zigzag path that surrounds most of the West Bank to hinder the lives of Palestinians and secure the settlements. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued an advisory opinion on 9 July 2004 declaring the wall illegal, just as the same court had issued an advisory opinion invalidating Moroccan claims to Western Sahara on 16 October 1975.
7. Sovereignty Over Natural Resources: International law recognises the sovereignty of the Sahrawi and Palestinian peoples over their natural resources by the right to self-determination, of which sovereignty is one of the four main components. The European Court of Justice (ECJ) decision of 25 February 2010 (Brita case), which confirmed that the framework agreement between Israel and the European Union on customs preferences, should not include products coming from the occupied West Bank, provided the framework and legal precedent that encouraged the Polisario Front to initiate litigation before the ECJ to invalidate the agreements signed between the EU and the Kingdom of Morocco, that include the occupied Western Sahara. Subsequently, the Court’s landmark decisions on Western Sahara in 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2021 were major gains also for the Palestinians, which they utilised to consolidate the gain of banning products from the occupied territories and settlements.
8. State Proclamation: To strengthen the resistance, consolidate their diplomatic gains, and emphasise national independence as historical imperatives, the liberation movements in Western Sahara (Polisario Front) and Palestine (Palestine Liberation Organisation) proclaimed two states from exile. The Polisario Front declared the Sahrawi Republic on 27 February 1976, one day after the evacuation of the last Spanish soldier from the territory, while the PLO declared the Palestinian State on 15 November 1988, during the 19th session of the Palestinian National Council. Both states were declared from Algiers, and till this day, Algeria plays a leading role, regionally and internationally, in defending the right of the two peoples to establish their states. The two states share the element of partial international recognition till date, although they have managed to gain full membership in their regional organisations: the African Union for the Sahrawi Republic and the League of Arab States for the State of Palestine.
9. Hostile Powers and Supportive Powers: While there are differences in details, the overall geopolitical landscape suggests a negative attitude from the majority of influential Western powers towards the struggle of the two peoples. At the same time, the two peoples enjoy strong and unconditional support from countries with liberation backgrounds, such as many African countries, especially Algeria and South Africa, as well as many Latin American countries ruled by progressive governments, such as Cuba, Venezuela, Colombia, Bolivia, etc. The same is true about the level of popular solidarity around the world, symbolised by how the prominent faces in the solidarity movement with the Palestinian people around the world are the same as those who are in solidarity with the Sahrawi people.

Picture credit: Manuel Cortina/NurPhoto/AP

This similarity between the two causes has led to the intersection of the two peoples’ struggles at many stages. The most noticeable is the current one, and it also led to the acceleration of the two occupying powers’ embrace of each other, enshrined by the humiliating normalisation process under the Abraham Accords. Its godfather was former US President Donald Trump, who traded his illegal recognition of Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara for Rabat’s recognition and diplomatic relations with Israel, leading Tel Aviv to also announce in a “non-évènement” move that it recognised the Kingdom’s sovereignty over Western Sahara.

The actual challenges and the pressure of the current pivotal juncture that the two causes are going through and the deepening and diversifying aspects of the alliance and joint conspiracy between Israel and Morocco, requires that Palestinians and Sahrawis raise their hands together and march jointly towards achieving freedom and independence. Only together can we exploit the opportunities that exist in the common enemy’s camp.

In Israel, the state is losing its prestige and the illusion of being the regional superpower. The political-religious contract is eroding like never before, the ruling coalition is torn apart, and Netanyahu is teetering between falling due to street pressure or the international arrest warrant. In Morocco, economic and human development indicators, the size of external and internal indebtedness, and the budget deficit exceeding all red lines, is creating an economic rift between the people and the government led by the Makhzen oligarchy of Prime Minister Aziz Akhannouch. In parallel, a political divorce with the regime is growing over normalisation with Israel and the betrayal of the Palestinian people, deepened now in the wake of the massacres committed in Gaza.

The two powers of military occupation, Israel and Morocco, are going through historic internal contradictions. The historical moment is similar to the one that France went through in the late 1950s before inevitably recognising the Algerian independence. The same pattern of internal upheaval could also be traced in the 1980s apartheid regime of South Africa, before Mandela’s release and acquiescence to the will of the oppressed majority. In order for history to repeat itself in Palestine and Western Sahara, the two peoples must be fully aware of the delicacy of the circumstance, with its great dangers and opportunities, to adopt the renewed roadmap that will accelerate the path of the historical inevitability of the defeat of occupation and the victory of the will of the peoples.

Oubi Bouchraya Bachir is the representative of the Frente POLISARIO in Switzerland and to the United Nations and international organisations in Geneva.