A fallout between US President Donald Trump and Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, led to the breakthrough that resulted in the Morocco-Israel normalization deal, sources briefed on the matter told Barak Ravid of Axios on Friday.
Inhofe, an avid supporter of the Polisario Front which seeks independence for Western Sahara, is one of Trump's closest allies in the Senate and has asked the President over the last two years not to recognize Moroccan sovereignty in the Western Sahara.
According to Ravid, Trump’s senior adviser Jared Kushner and special envoy Avi Berkowitz have been speaking with the Moroccan government for more than two years about the possibility of normalizing relations with Israel in exchange for recognition of the Western Sahara.
In May 2019, the report said, a direct channel was created between Kushner’s team and Moroccan foreign minister Nasser Bourita after Kushner visited Morocco and met with King Mohammed VI.
According to Ravid, Kushner, Berkowitz and Bourita effectively reached a deal a little more than a year ago, but Inhofe joined with then-national security adviser John Bolton to vehemently oppose it.
While Trump agreed not to move forward with the deal at the time, his relations with Inhofe soured about a week ago over the National Defense Authorization Act, sources who were involved in the matter told Ravid.
Following this, Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows, Kushner and Berkowitz saw this as an opening to get the Morocco deal done.
Ravid reported in February of this year that Israel and the US were discussing a deal that would see the US recognize Moroccan sovereignty in the Western Sahara and Morocco take steps to normalize relations with Israel.
In August, Moroccan Prime Minister Saad Dine El Otmani rejected any normalization of relations with Israel, saying that doing so would embolden Israel “to go further in breaching the rights of the Palestinian people.”
He later appeared to walk back those comments, saying the remarks were made in his capacity as leader of the Islamist PJD party, not as Prime Minister and that he had just been reiterating a long-held position of his party.
(Arutz Sheva’s North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Arutz Sheva articles, however, is Israeli time.)