In August 2020, the United Arab Emirates announced it was normalizing relations with Israel. The world called it historic. American diplomats called it a breakthrough. Trump called it a miracle. The Abraham Accords, signed on the White House lawn on September 15, 2020, were presented as the dawn of a new Middle East: ancient enemies finally finding common ground, Arab states finally making peace with the Jewish state.

I read all the coverage at the time and kept thinking the same thing: What exactly are we celebrating the beginning of when most of this was already happening?

The handshake on the White House lawn did not build a new relationship. It put a name tag on one that already existed.

Start with Morocco, because Morocco’s story is the most extraordinary and the least told.

Morocco has kept secret relations mostly intact with Israel since the 1960s, when King Hassan II established clandestine links with Tel Aviv. In September 1965, Arab leaders gathered in Casablanca for a summit to discuss Israel. King Hassan II, who did not trust his guests from the Arab League, secretly recorded the discussions and gave the recordings to the Israeli Mossad. A joint Shin Bet and Mossad team known as “The Birds,” co-led by Peter Zvi Malkin and Rafi Eitan, was initially stationed on an entire floor of the Casablanca hotel. Hassan asked them to leave a day before the conference began, fearing discovery, but immediately after it ended, the Moroccans gave Israeli intelligence everything they had recorded.

The recordings revealed that the Arab states were preparing for war but were deeply divided and ill-prepared. Mossad chief Meir Amit described the Casablanca operation as “one of the greatest moments of Israeli intelligence” in a memo to then-Prime Minister Levi Eshkol. The Six-Day War of June 1967, the conflict that reshaped the entire Middle East and whose consequences are still playing out........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)