‘I can organize a demonstration of millions of people for Palestine, but not for the price of bread or the reform of the constitution’, said a leading Moroccan activist back in 2007 (Interview 25 October 2007 and 26 November 2007). Years before the Arab uprisings of 2011, amid the global War on Terror era, protests for Arab causes worked as a laboratory for domestic political opposition in Morocco. In terms of numbers, solidarity with Palestine (after the 2000 Second Intifada) and Iraq (following the 2003 US invasion) led to some of the largest street demonstrations both in the history of this country and synchronically across the Arab world. Organizationally speaking, along with localized episodes of contention driven by socioeconomic grievances such as the rising cost of living, responses to Middle East conflicts created a breeding ground for many new local opposition networks and coordination committees (tansikiyat), including precarious Islamist–left coalitions (Buehler Reference Buehler2018; Casani Reference Casani2020). These would subsequently act as core mobilizing structures for the 20 February Movement during the so-called ‘Arab Spring’. The 2011 regional turmoil would enable the translation of Moroccan contentious politics from the local and transnational levels to a Rabat-centred national political arena that had been hitherto spared (Fernández-Molina Reference Fernández-Molina2011: 435–437). Yet, in the early 2000s, it was foreign affairs and foreign policy that most visibly elicited opposition in this country.
This puzzling situation raises important questions about the relationship between foreign policy and domestic political opposition in general, and more particularly in authoritarian contexts. To what extent do these two key aspects of a state’s politics and policy influence each other when the electoral, parliamentary and public opinion input into policymaking is at best limited? In this article, we examine one side of the relationship by asking, as our main research question, how foreign policy influences domestic opposition spaces. To this purpose, we combine insights from the classical literature on the domestic opposition–foreign policy interaction in foreign policy analysis (FPA) with our own proposal to analyse opposition as a tri-dimensional political space – as the dynamic product of intersecting institutional, practical and discursive spaces. Empirically, we address the effects on domestic opposition of both structural foreign policy change and specific foreign policy shocks or crises. We focus on the case of Morocco as an authoritarian state, examining a historically sensitive aspect of its foreign policy – relations with Israel and Palestine – and its domestic reactions to Israel’s wars on Gaza in 2008–2009 and 2023–2025.
We seek to contribute to knowledge on the foreign policy–opposition–authoritarianism nexus in two ways: first, by empirically capturing and dissecting the dynamic and multifaceted character of opposition in such area and conditions through the exploratory, in-depth investigation of what arguably constitutes an extreme case (and within-case cases) of foreign policy influence over domestic politics; and second, by advancing theory development through an original approach of opposition as a tri-dimensional political space, combined with inductive insights from the case study. Based on the analysis of Morocco’s recent relations with Israel and Palestine, including major foreign policy crises and transformations, we identify three main trends in the effects on the country’s political opposition. We argue that, mediated by domestic political change associated with the 2011 Arab uprisings, responses to the wars on Gaza and bilateral normalization with Israel have contributed to: a shrinking of the institutional opposition space coupled with the deepening of the divide between actors excluded and included therein, a consolidation of cross-ideological opposition coalitions in the context of an expansion of the practical space beyond street protests, and a growing regime–opposition misalignment despite the persistence of deep-seated ‘red lines’ in the discursive space.
Empirical research design and sources
In order to empirically explore how foreign policy influences domestic opposition spaces in a Global South authoritarian context, we focus on the case of Morocco and its relations with Israel and Palestine over the past two decades. Morocco is classified as a ‘closed autocracy’ and ranked in the bottom 30–40% of the world based on the V-Dem Democracy Indices for 2024 (Nord et al. Reference Nord2025). Other descriptions range from a ‘hybrid regime with a superficial democratic façade’ by the Economist Intelligence Unit (2025) to a ‘hard-line autocracy’ by Bertelsmann Stiftung’s Transformation Index (BTI) (Bertelsmann Stiftung 2025). More importantly, from the comparison between the 2008–2009 and 2023–2025 periods a contrast emerges between phases of stalled political liberalization and authoritarian consolidation, respectively. The BTI points to a significant deterioration in the country’s democratic status over the last two decades, in parallel with the monarchy’s growing centrality in the political system (see Appendix 1 in the Supplementary Material). The BTI country report from 2010 stated: ‘The major economic and political trends in Morocco from 2007 to 2009 remained consistent with those … from 2005 to 2007. … Despite fairly transparent legislative elections in 2007, Morocco’s political system is still authoritarian in nature. The 2007 elections had the lowest turnout in the history of the country’ (Bertelsmann Stiftung 2009). A decade and a half later, the same institution’s diagnosis was that:
In 2021, a decade after the February 20, 2011, uprisings, the monarchy consolidated its centrality in Morocco’s political system. … The rise to power of pro-palace parties and the lack of a powerful opposition have further narrowed Morocco’s political landscape, with the palace consolidating its hold on power. … Throughout 2021 and 2022, the space for criticism and opposition diminished. (Bertelsmann Stiftung 2024)
The reinforcement of the king’s power over these years has come at the expense of representative institutions and actors such as the political parties, and severely restricting the space for any meaningful institutional opposition (Maghraoui Reference Maghraoui2020). Furthermore, in this context, foreign policy is a traditional ‘reserved domain’ over which the monarchy exerts ‘disproportionate powers’ (Fernández-Molina Reference Fernández-Molina2016: 30).
When it comes to Morocco’s relations with Israel and Palestine, we treat them as an extreme case of foreign policy influence over domestic politics given the unparalleled level of contestation and unrest elicited here by tensions between the norms of Arabism and actual behaviour. This means that the use of the case is primarily exploratory and seeking inductive theory development rather than testing specific causal hypotheses (Seawright and Gerring Reference Seawright and Gerring2008: 301–302). The same applies to our two selected within-case cases, the Israeli wars on Gaza of 2008–2009 and 2023–2025. Their analysis, as a within-case diachronic comparison (Gerring Reference Gerring2016: 27–29), allows us to capture the consequences of both extraordinary, time-bound foreign policy shocks – such as the wars themselves – and more gradual yet structural foreign policy transformations – such as the Morocco–Israel normalization that occurred in between them, from 2020. In the case of the 2023–2025 war, which is still ongoing at the time of writing, we focus on its first eight months (from 7 October 2023 to mid-May 2024) for pragmatic reasons.
In short, our explanatory variables are foreign policy shocks and transformations, while the outcome/dependent ones are institutional, practical and discursive domestic opposition spaces. In addition, primarily domestic political change appears as an intervening variable. Such is the role attributed here to another significant transformation process that took place in Morocco during these years: the one triggered by the 2011 Arab uprisings and the mobilization of the national 20 February Movement. Unlike in neighbouring countries, protests in Morocco did not target the head of state, which allowed King Mohamed VI to swiftly neutralize them through a top-down constitutional reform and the calling of snap elections (Maghraoui Reference Maghraoui2011). While the new 2011 constitution slightly expanded the powers of parliament and government, the palace would gradually regain its spheres of influence and action from 2014 onwards (Monjib Reference Monjib2015). Nevertheless, this unprecedented nationwide protest cycle marked a turning point by enabling transgressions of the country’s long-standing discursive ‘red lines’ in the discursive opposition space (Hoffmann and König Reference Hoffmann and König2013: 2), as well as cross-ideological collaboration between left-wing and Islamist opposition actors in the practical one (McManus Reference McManus2016: 7). It also reshaped and intensified the cleavage between included and excluded actors in the institutional opposition space. Aside from post-2011 domestic political change, we have not considered other domestic institutional variables addressed by the literature on political opposition such as the degree of government decentralization or federalism and the electoral and party systems. Similarly excluded from our analysis are socioeconomic variables other than the cultural ones involved in Morocco’s discursive opposition space.
In terms of data, our case study relies on an extensive range of primary sources, including interviews, statements from the Moroccan Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, press releases from the official news agency Maghreb Arabe Presse (MAP), as well as articles from various national and international media outlets (see full lists in Appendices 2–4 in the Supplementary Material). Official statements enabled us to reconstruct Morocco’s foreign policy positions, decisions and justifications thereof. Press releases and articles were instrumental in understanding by whom, how and why these policies caused opposition. In addition, we draw on 14 interviews conducted during various research stays in or trips to Rabat in the framework of different doctoral and postdoctoral projects, in September–December 2007 and June 2009 (by Irene Fernández-Molina), September 2021 (by Alfonso Casani) and February–June 2024 (by Francesco Colin). These were all in-person, semi-structured and (with one exception) one-on-one interviews with Moroccan opposition and/or civil society activists from secular left-wing, Islamist and other organizations, as well as academics and journalists. Interviews provided broader contextual information while also addressing individual and collective dynamics specific to the different opposition actors. Altogether, what we offer in this article is an integrative analysis, where the diverse data collected through different methods and moments of field research has been ‘integrated via analysis and then given equal weight in their contribution to theorizing the relationship between macro-, meso- and micro-social processes’ (Moran-Ellis et al. Reference Moran-Ellis2006: 55).
Domestic opposition and foreign policy
In examining the impact of foreign policy shifts and crises upon domestic opposition spaces, we build on the ‘linkage politics’ scholarship (Rosenau Reference Rosenau1969) and so-called liberal or pluralistic approaches to FPA, all of which foreground the international–domestic interplay, thereby bridging international relations (IR) and comparative politics. Among the pioneers in this literature, Peter Katzenstein (Reference Katzenstein1976) highlighted the role of the states’ domestic institutional structures, while Peter Gourevitch (Reference Gourevitch1978) prioritized more political and dynamic aspects such as the internal distribution of interests, conflict over policy, coalition-building and legitimation processes. Bringing these two approaches together in a ‘paradigmatic’ contribution (Hudson Reference Hudson2005: 12), Robert Putnam (Reference Putnam1988) theorized ‘two-level games’ as the twofold (external and internal) bargaining involved in all international negotiations, and identified the factors determining the likelihood of any international agreement being ratified in the domestic arena. Both Gourevitch (Reference Gourevitch1978: 907) and Putnam (Reference Putnam1988: 442–444) referred to opposition in their analyses, albeit only in a passing way, and without engaging with the influential strand of theoretical and comparative work on regimes and oppositions that had been initiated in parallel by Robert Dahl (Reference Dahl1973).
Upon this background, Joe Hagan stood out early on for centring and unpacking the role of political opposition in FPA. He adopted an actor-centred definition of political regime – ‘the particular political group, or coalition of groups, that controls the highest authoritative policymaking bodies of the national government’ – as well as opposition – ‘those groups in the political system who challenge the current regime’s hold on power and/or program of policies’ (Hagan Reference Hagan1993: 2, emphasis in original). Hagan examined how the characteristics of political opposition translate into ‘regime fragmentation’ (internal divisions at individual personality, institutional-bureaucratic, factional or party level) and ‘regime vulnerability’ (the perceived probability of its removal from power) (Hagan Reference Hagan, Hermann, Kegley and Rosenau1987: 341–348, Reference Hagan1993: 68–76, 91–93). For him, opposition originates from divisions within the ruling party or group, from other political parties (channelled through parliament or other non-executive institutional arenas), from military and paramilitary actors, and from regionally based groups (Hagan Reference Hagan1993: 78–88). Opposition actors may also include other politically active segments of society (such as interest groups) and the wider mass public (in the form of public opinion or civil unrest) (Hagan Reference Hagan, Hermann, Kegley and Rosenau1987: 343). As a result, foreign policy decision-makers act under the pressure of not one but two domestic political imperatives: ‘building policy coalitions’ (by increasing domestic support for their initiatives) and ‘retaining political power’ (by reducing the domestic costs thereof) (Hagan Reference Hagan, Neak, Hey and Haney1995: 121–127). The leaders’ ensuing political strategies to manage foreign policy belong to three main categories: ‘accommodation’ (negotiating and mitigating internal controversy through low-risk behaviour), ‘mobilization’ (manipulating foreign policy for regime and policy legitimation purposes) and ‘insulation’ (dissociating the two spheres) (Hagan Reference Hagan, Neak, Hey and Haney1995: 127–132).
Another important contribution from Hagan – which is particularly relevant to this article – was his effort to overcome the binary between ‘open’ and ‘closed’ political systems prevailing in comparative FPA. He criticized the common assumption that foreign policymaking in ‘closed’ systems is largely immune to, or free from, the domestic political influences that constrain it in ‘open’ systems. In reality, he argued, all of the domestic–foreign policy ‘dual games and alternative strategies are pervasive across the different types of political systems and are not limited to established democracies’ (Hagan Reference Hagan, Neak, Hey and Haney1995: 121, emphasis in original; see Hagan Reference Hagan, Hermann, Kegley and Rosenau1987: 340–342, Reference Hagan1993: 36–58). Notwithstanding this early correction attempt, the scholarship on the foreign policy–domestic opposition nexus has continued to follow mostly separate paths in addressing cases of liberal democracies in the Global North and Global South contexts where authoritarianism is more prevalent. In the former geographies, attention has been increasingly devoted to the specific roles of public opinion (Risse-Kappen Reference Risse-Kappen1991), parliaments (Kesgin and Kaarbo Reference Kesgin and Kaarbo2010), coalition politics (Kaarbo Reference Kaarbo1996, Reference Kaarbo2012), protest and social movements (Knopf Reference Knopf1998; see also Ozkececi-Taner Reference Ozkececi-Taner2017). In the latter, by contrast, empirical research has been less prolific and fine-grained, and has therefore made less headway in developing seminal theories such as Steven David’s (Reference David1991) ‘omnibalancing’ and Mohammed Ayoob’s (Reference Ayoob1995) ‘Third World security predicament’. Omnibalancing in particular highlighted how, in deciding about their international alignments, ‘Third World’ leaders tend to balance against internal threats – that is, domestic opposition to their rule – as much as if not more than against the external ones presumed by the classical realist theory of balance of power (see also Moon Reference Moon, Neak, Hey and Haney1995: 192–195).
In addition, one final relevant reconsideration of the liberal FPA literature concerns the need to bring into the picture domestic ideational, identity and normative factors that are not reducible to rational choice and interests. This has been the endeavour of scholars seeking to ‘domesticize constructivism’ since the early 2000s (Hopf Reference Hopf2002; Ozkececi-Taner Reference Ozkececi-Taner2005) and has led, among other things, to a productive importation of role theory into FPA. Such an approach links identity-based (national) role conceptions to expectations about foreign policy behaviour, which may provoke ‘identity contestation’: ‘A proposed foreign policy can spark cognitive dissonance when citizens see this policy as irreducibly contradicting the regime’s traditional role’ (Yom Reference Yom2020: 576, emphasis in original). In the regional context relevant to our case, a historically recurrent source of identity-based opposition to foreign policy lies in the ‘norms of Arabism’. Michael Barnett (Reference Barnett1998) coined this term to refer to intersubjective expectations underpinning the construction of a region-wide Arab political identity in three key areas: pan-Arab unity, independence from the West and opposition to Zionism/Israel. For decades, defining the norms of Arabism was ‘an exercise of power and a mechanism of social control’ in the hands of Arab leaders. Yet, the same leaders were impelled to honour and/or manipulate such norms for reasons of ‘self-image’ and ‘self-preservation’ as ‘these were not simply foreign policy issues; they also were domestic issues’ (Barnett Reference Barnett1998: 7, 11, 17–18). An example of the transgression of the norms of Arabism discussed below in our case study is Morocco’s normalization of bilateral relations with Israel in 2020, which indeed blurred the distinction between contestation over domestic and international issues for the former country’s opposition.
Tri-dimensional political space for opposition
In this section, we add to the limited FPA literature on the foreign policy–opposition nexus our own theoretical proposal to refine our understanding of the opposition element, based on the notion of political spaces. We define political spaces for opposition as the arenas of collaboration and contestation that allow the expression of organized forms of disagreement with the hegemonic consensus. Fundamentally, arenas do not refer to a strictly geographical space, but rather to the set of relations that bind actors within a given context. Following Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of ‘field’ (Reference Bourdieu2021), political spaces articulate actors’ room for action depending on their relative position and power balance. Beyond outlining the potential set of interactions among the actors engaged in these spaces, this relational dimension implies acknowledging that political spaces are also produced and shaped by such interactions (see also Harvey Reference Harvey, Castree and Gregory2006; Lefèbvre Reference Lefèbvre1991). Unlike Hagan’s, this approach avoids defining a priori who the opposition is; rather, it engages with opposition sensu lato, focusing on identifying expressions of disagreement towards political decisions, practices and authorities (Kubat Reference Kubat2010). Moreover, it recognizes that such challenges entail dynamics of both contestation and collaboration – thereby shifting the attention towards the interactions between the constellation of actors that can be considered opposition and their continuous (re-)composition.
Clarifying the way in which these spaces are political is also instrumental to understanding how actors interact within them. To do so, we rely on Chantal Mouffe’s definition of politics as ‘the ensemble of practices, discourses and institutions that seek to establish a sense of social order and organization’ (Mouffe Reference Mouffe2013: 14). On one hand, this definition hints at the inherent precariousness and temporality of any hegemonic consensus and at the continuous efforts necessary to consolidate it (see Laclau and Mouffe Reference Laclau and Mouffe1985). On the other, it provides a threefold analytical framework that helps to analytically disaggregate political spaces for opposition into their institutional, practical and discursive dimensions.
First, the institutional opposition space relates to the formal opportunities to challenge the hegemonic consensus in the framework of legally sanctioned rules and procedures. It implies assessing the way in which the ‘rules of the game’ define the opportunities to express disagreement, while also implicitly relying on and consolidating the regime’s hegemonic consensus. Analysing this dimension involves not only understanding which actors are included or excluded from institutional settings, but also exploring what such positioning implies in terms of power balances and potential to influence the hegemonic consensus. For instance, this means recognizing that included actors may have more opportunities to voice disagreement, but perhaps more constraints and fewer incentives to directly challenge the regime. Conversely, excluded actors may have less legal-institutional room for manoeuvre, but more legitimacy in the eyes of the population. Second, the practical opposition space concerns the specific, localized and material patterns of action through which such expressions of disagreement are performed. The analysis of this dimension is embedded in the recognition of the porous boundaries between social and political action, which cannot be determined independently from broader contextual references (Mouffe Reference Mouffe2005). As Petr Hlavacek and Jan Holzer put it, this includes actors whose objectives are not purely political, but who ‘can create secondary political effects on the regime/system, whether intended or not’ (Reference Hlavacek and Holzer2009: 8). Third, the discursive opposition space is shaped by the ways in which actors frame their behaviour and articulate their opposition. This implies recognizing the strategic dimension of discursive framing practices and how these contribute to actors’ alignment with specific political positions (Pan and Kosicki Reference Pan, Kosicki, Reese, Gandy and Grant2001). A spatial analysis underscores how actors consolidate existing cleavages, or challenge them by creating new ones, as well as how these boundaries evolve in time.
Institutional, practical and discursive opposition spaces are the three relevant outcome/dependent variables that will guide the analysis of the case study below. Importantly, although we examine them separately for pragmatic reasons, these three dimensions are inherently interdependent.
Moroccan reactions to the Gaza wars and normalization with Israel
This section provides the background of our case study by describing the official Moroccan foreign policy responses to Israel’s wars on Gaza in 2008–2009 and 2023–2025 as well as the 2020 Moroccan–Israeli normalization. Against the backdrop of its long-standing endorsement of a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine based on UN Security Council Resolution 242 (1967) and the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, Rabat’s reaction to the 2008–2009 war played out at four levels. First, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation (MAEC) promptly issued a communiqué to ‘vigorously condemn the massive Israeli military operations … and firmly denounce the disproportionate use of force and this tragic escalation of violence’ (MAEC 27 December 2008). This was followed by a chain reaction of most Moroccan political parties, labour union and civil society organizations, which reproved Israel’s ‘barbaric’ and ‘genocidal’ aggression in nearly identical terms (Le Matin 29 December 2008, 31 December 2008; Al Bayane 30 December 2008). This demonstrated the continuing domestic vigour of the norm of Arabism prescribing opposition to Zionism/Israel (Barnett Reference Barnett1998). Second, in UN-level diplomacy, Morocco’s international responsibility was greater than usual at this time because it held the rotating presidency of the Arab Group at the UN. This put Morocco in charge of contacting the presidency of the Security Council to demand urgent measures and convening several Arab–UN meetings during which the terms of Resolution 1860 (calling for an immediate ceasefire and a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza) were negotiated (MAEC 5 January 2009, 13 January 2009, 17 January 2009).
Third, on the regional diplomatic front, Morocco had to face the resurfacing of Arab fragmentation, which had been prominent since Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 2006 (Hamzawy Reference Hamzawy2008). The polarization between ‘axis of resistance’ actors that supported the Hamas authorities in different ways, led by Syria and Qatar (plus the non-Arab Iran), and ‘moderate’ states that practically aligned with Israel, such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, translated into the organization of two almost simultaneous Arab conferences in Doha and Kuwait in mid-January 2009. Mohamed VI chose not to personally attend either summit to avoid expressly taking sides. While part of a broader trend of distancing himself from Middle Eastern affairs, the Royal Cabinet portrayed this decision as a protest against ‘a distressing Arab situation that [had] reached an unprecedented level of deterioration in the history of joint Arab action’ (MAEC 14 January 2009). The official statement proclaimed that Morocco placed the Palestinian cause, ‘in terms of sacredness, at the same rank as the cause of its territorial integrity’. It also simultaneously appealed to various norms of Arabism by blaming failure to effectively support the Palestinian cause on ‘these subsidiary disputes’ preventing Arab unity. Fourth, besides diplomatic and rhetorical action, there were several humanitarian ‘royal gestures’. For instance, Mohamed VI instructed for two Moroccan hospitals to provide treatment to 200 wounded Palestinians (MAEC 7 January 2009) and sent two medical delegations to Gaza (MAP 19 January 2009).
The Gaza war of 2023–2025 would take place in a transformed regional context. This had been fundamentally reshaped by the normalization of relations, in 2020, between Israel and four Arab countries – namely Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan and Morocco – under the sponsorship of the US and the umbrella of the so-called Abraham Accords. In the case of Morocco, the tripartite nature of the agreement was evident from the US recognition of Rabat’s sovereignty over Western Sahara included in the Morocco–Israel–US Joint Declaration of 22 December 2020,Footnote 1 which formalized the idea that integration of the disputed territory into Morocco was the only solution to this conflict (Warshel Reference Warshel2021: 126). This ‘bundle-deal’ (Fakir Reference Fakir2022) highlighted the prioritization of its self-styled ‘national territorial integrity’ as the main driver of Moroccan foreign policy (Fernández-Molina Reference Fernández-Molina2016: 20). Unlike the other signatories, Morocco already had a long-standing relationship with Israel, embedded in historical, cultural and economic ties which had even led to the opening of liaison offices in Rabat and Tel Aviv in 1994 (yet closed in 2000 after the outbreak of the Second Intifada) (Abadi Reference Abadi2000; Hallward and Biygautane Reference Hallward and Biygautane2024; Laskier Reference Laskier2004; Segev and Shumacher Reference Segev and Shumacher2008). Still, bringing to the light and formalizing ‘that which already unofficially existed’ (Warshel Reference Warshel2021: 124) was to significantly increase the misalignment between Moroccan society’s prevailing identity-based role conceptions and the new official foreign policy orientation. Subsequently, cooperation with Israel would be most fruitful in defence and security areas, as evidenced by the promotion of drone deals, the development of surveillance satellites, and the rapprochement of positions on regional affairs, as demonstrated, for instance, at the 2022 Negev Summit.
It is against this backdrop that the war on Gaza of 2023–2025 began in October 2023. An unprecedented Hamas-led attack across the border of the strip triggered an also unparalleled Israeli bombing campaign and land invasion, which has shown a quantitative and qualitative leap in length, levels of violence and international condemnation compared to previous offensives against the Palestinians. However, compared to the 2008–2009 war, Morocco met these events with a more silent and tamed reaction (Saddiki Reference Saddiki2023). The first communiqué of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed ‘deep concern at the deterioration of the situation’ and condemned ‘attacks against civilians wherever they may be’ (MAEC 7 October 2023), yet failed to mention any of the parties involved in the confrontation. Morocco’s first condemnation of Israel’s actions would not take place until 53 days after the beginning of the war, when Mohamed VI stated that ‘the recent escalation is the result of Israel’s systematic, extremist practices, unilateral measures and repeated provocations in Al-Quds’ (MAEC 29 November 2023). The raising of the tone occurred on the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People and in a UN forum. Further measures of UN-level diplomacy remained in line with the past, reiterating Morocco’s formal support for the two-state solution (Yabiladi 20 December 2023), and calling for an ‘immediate, comprehensive, and sustainable cessation of the Israeli war on Gaza’ (MAEC 12 Feburary 2024).
At the regional level, Morocco’s action was marked by its presidency of the Arab League’s Council. Four days after Hamas’s attack, Morocco called for an urgent meeting of the Arab League. Three weeks later, another urgent joint summit gathered the Arab League and Organization of Islamic Cooperation members ‘to discuss the Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people’. On these occasions, Morocco stressed the need to deliver humanitarian aid, de-escalate the conflict and enforce the two-state solution. In terms of ‘royal gestures’, Israel exceptionally authorized Morocco to deliver 40 tons of humanitarian aid to Gaza in March 2024, during Ramadan (Jeune Afrique 12 March 2024). In January, the palace instructed the allocation of additional scholarships to Palestinian students enrolled in Moroccan universities (Le Matin 17 January 2024). Meanwhile, the progress of diplomatic and commercial normalization with Israel was increasingly surrounded by mutism and slowed down (Yabiladi 26 December 2023), as reflected in the evacuation of Israel’s liaison office in Rabat and the suspension of direct travel between the two countries.
Institutional opposition space
Morocco’s institutional opposition space remained narrow during both the 2008–2009 and the 2023–2025 wars on Gaza. However, there was a contrast related to this dimension between opposition reactions to the two crises. While the former episode led to some convergence between excluded and included opposition actors in the legislative and executive state institutions, the latter saw the Moroccan–Israeli normalization deepen the excluded/included divide. This foreign policy shift forced included actors to realign with the Moroccan state’s new official position while granting greater freedom of action to opposition actors without institutional presence.
During the 2008–2009 Gaza war, there were two parallel processes in the Moroccan institutional opposition space. On one hand, intra-institutional political actors gradually tried to gain ground in, and thereby broaden the boundaries of, the pro-Palestinian protest movement, which was initially dominated by their extra-institutional counterparts. The first phase was one of decentralized mobilization and sit-ins at the local level, generally convened and attended by the Moroccan Association of Human Rights (AMDH), other human rights associations, labour unions, Islamist groups and ad hoc organizations such as the National Action Committee in Support of Iraq and Palestine (hereinafter, National Action Committee), which brought together different left-wing and Islamist parties and associations. Political parties with parliamentary representation and partners of the government coalition had a limited presence therein. This changed in a second phase marked by coordination and centralization efforts, which led to the organization of massive ‘national marches’ like the ones held in Rabat on 4 January and Casablanca on 18 January 2009. While these demonstrations were convened by the National Action Committee and Moroccan Association for the Support of the Palestinian Struggle (AMALP), a network stemming from the historical opposition rooted in the national movement, those who eventually marched at its front were several government ministers and secretaries general of major political parties (Al Bayane 2 January 2009), demonstrating the institutionally included actors’ desire to take over or co-opt the initiative. Overall, the regime’s position on this war was not significantly at odds with that of extra-institutional actors, which limited the scope of substantive opposition in general.
At the same time, extra-institutional actors strove to penetrate the institutionalized space to formally influence policymaking. On 6 January 2009, the National Action Committee joined forces with AMALP to address letters to the prime minister and the minister of Habous and Islamic Affairs requesting immediate action on the religious, humanitarian and diplomatic fronts: devoting the Moroccan mosques’ next Friday sermon and prayers to the Palestinian ‘martyrs’ in Gaza; establishing a humanitarian air bridge to expedite medical and food assistance to the strip while receiving injured people for treatment in Moroccan hospitals; and accepting the invitation for Morocco to attend the urgent Arab conference on this war that was about to take place in Doha, associated with the ‘axis of resistance’. Mohammed VI responded positively to the humanitarian demands but not to those involving foreign policy collaboration with the regional ‘axis of resistance’, showing that the palace maintained a tight grip on foreign policy decisions (NAC 15 January 2009). A similar eagerness to associate itself with popular decisions was shown by the Islamist Justice and Development Party (PJD), which had accessed institutional spaces only in 1997. When the king ordered the opening of a Bank Al-Maghrib account to centralize donations for Gaza, the PJD’s secretary general claimed to be the initiator of the idea, which earned him a severe reprimand from the prime minister. ‘The royal decisions … are motivated by purely humanitarian motivations, far from any external influence or ephemeral circumstantial considerations’, stressed a governmental statement that censored the PJD’s ‘low political calculations’ (Al Ahdath Al Maghribia 28 January 2009; El País 8 February 2009).
In the context of the 2023–2025 war, by contrast, the preceding Morocco-Israel normalization had deepened the cleavage between included and excluded opposition actors. The repositioning of the palace now prevented criticism of Morocco’s stance towards Israel by turning it into a new red line (Brouksy Reference Brouksy2024). Furthermore, the shielding of this issue broadened the impact and sensitivity of criticisms on the matter, turning it from an international issue based on the norms of Arabism to a challenge to the palace’s ‘reserved domain’. All this precluded a strong institutional mobilization from the political parties represented in parliament and/or in the coalition government. As a result, the role of extra-institutional actors in leading the way for opposition against Israel’s actions was significantly more prominent than in 2008–2009.
Institutional impasse was evident in both the Moroccan government’s initial silence and the demand from the senior coalition partner, the National Rally of Independents (RNI) to ‘rally around the official position of the Kingdom of Morocco, which calls on both sides to avoid violence’, in the aftermath of 7 October (Maroc Hebdo 13 October 2023). In this context, the first chamber of parliament called for an end to the war and the recognition of a Palestinian state, without further details on the solution. Its deputy chairwoman’s statement praised ‘the contacts made by Moroccan diplomacy in accordance with royal directives’. A slightly more severe statement from the second chamber denounced the ‘murder of civilians by the Israeli occupation authorities’, while also praising the ‘historical’ support to Palestinians given by the Kingdom of Morocco (Tel Quel 18 October 2023).
Respecting the newly imposed red lines, opposition actions within the institutional space were scarce and did not directly address Morocco’s foreign policy towards Israel. As an exception, the left-wing Unified Socialist Party (PSU) questioned the Ministry of Habous and Islamic Affairs in Parliament about the management of waqfs or religious properties by a Moroccan Jew linked to the ultra-Orthodox Israeli Shas party (Maroc-Diplomatique 10 November 2023), in addition to accusing the government of forbidding denunciations of Israel’s actions against Palestinians in mosques (Le360 6 November 2024). Likewise, a former MP of the Istiqlal Party wrote a letter to the king demanding that he strip the Moroccan nationality of Israeli Moroccans participating in the invasion of Gaza (Hespress 16 December 2023). From the tripartite coalition in government, the nationalist Istiqlal was the party most attached to the norms of Arabism due to its conservative and religious character. This led it to maintain a more critical stance than its coalition partners, while avoiding directly challenging Morocco’s relationship with Israel.
Practical opposition space
In both 2008–2009 and 2023–2025, the primary spaces where Moroccan opposition to Israel’s wars on Gaza was practically performed were the streets and the internet. The former were the theatre of a combination of two main types of practices: on one hand, collective protest such as the long-established local rallies or sit-ins (Vairel Reference Vairel2005b) and the ‘national marches’ in Rabat and Casablanca; on the other, cross-ideological coalition-building between very heterogeneous opposition actors. When it comes to the digital space, the most significant practices were boycott initiatives against Israeli and international companies.
In 2008–2009, the pro-Palestinian protests’ mobilization structure largely relied on what core actors called the ‘anti-imperialist network’ (Attadamoun April 2008, January 2009) in the framework of the extra-institutional ‘rejection front’. Two groups that shared this self-exclusionist position acted as the network’s nodes: the AMDH, which stood out as a full-blown, broad-based political actor with greater grassroots support and territorial reach than most political parties (Le Journal Hebdomadaire 6 October 2007), and the National Action Committee, which acts as a specific coordination mechanism for Arab causes, bringing together a wide spectrum of left-wing and Islamist parties and associations. While the National Action Committee was open to both intra- and extra-institutional actors, its own origins lay in a split and exit from the institutional space in 2002, when it separated from the historical AMALP (Interview 6 November 2007-A; Interview 6 November 2007-B). As highlighted by interviews with members of these organizations, the National Action Committee’s creation reflected two overlapping cleavages: internal divisions over the ‘participationist’ strategy of the Socialist Union of Popular Forces (USFP), with which the AMALP was associated (Interview 11 June 2009) – a point linking back to the institutional space discussed above – and disagreements among secular pro-Palestinian actors about cooperating with Islamist groups such as the extra-institutional Al-Adl wa-l-Ihsane (AWI) (Interview 6 November 2007-A; Interview 6 November 2007-B; Interview 25 October 2007 and 26 November 2007).
Fifteen years later, coalition-building practices were further rehearsed and consolidated thanks to the intermediate experiences of the 2011 Arab uprisings and opposition to the normalization with Israel (Casani Reference Casani2020). Mobilizations across 2023–2025 showed the transverse, cross-ideological nature of the Palestinian cause as the backbone of the political spaces for opposition in Morocco. From a practical space perspective, the bulk of actions was carried out outside institutions, mostly led by the Moroccan Front for Supporting Palestine and Against Normalization (hereinafter, Moroccan Front). This platform’s composition suggested a slight expansion of the ‘rejection front’ previously consolidated by the cleavage between supporters and opponents of the 2011 constitutional reform. Interviewees confirmed that the Moroccan Front brought together a broad spectrum of institutionally included, semi-excluded, and excluded actors, as well as secular and Islamist groups, whose collaboration had proven difficult in previous years (Interview 30 August 2021). Although the overall coordination depended on the AMDH, the Islamist association AWI provided the main source of street-level mobilization due to its wide popular support (Interview 5 January 2024).
At the same time, Moroccan Front members frame its creation in December 2020 as a direct response to the normalization announcement (Interview 30 August 2021). In a more distinct way than previous collaborations on this issue, the Moroccan Front was not only a means for the expression of support to Palestine, but it also fiercely opposed Morocco’s foreign policy towards Israel, calling for the suppression of all bilateral diplomatic and economic ties. Significantly, as noted in an interview with a Moroccan Front member, the PJD’s perceived political complicity with normalization led to its exclusion from this coalition (Interview 31 August 2021; Casani and Colin Reference Casani and Colin2023). Such a party had led the government from 2011 to 2021, successfully balancing criticism of the government’s lack of autonomy with its support for the palace. However, the signing of the normalization agreements under its mandate had a profound impact on its 2021 electoral results, leading to its decimation with the loss of 112 seats (Allal Reference Allal2021).
Despite the collaboration with institutionally included actors, the Moroccan Front’s practical opposition would focus on the streets and the digital space (Interview 31 August 2021), showing continuity with the past. Its strategy prioritized convening a high number of demonstrations or sit-ins in multiple locations across the country simultaneously every Friday, on the so-called ‘Friday of Rage’. The geographical scope and the endurance in time of these mobilizations were commonly invoked as an argument demonstrating the widespread support for the Palestinian cause. In addition to the weekly demonstrations, the Moroccan Front called for monthly national rallies in Rabat or Casablanca, with a greater level of organization and with the purpose of showing off its mobilization capacity (Le Monde 25 October 2023).
A second means of cross-ideological coalition-building continued to be the old National Action Committee, which included the PJD, the USFP and other parties with parliamentary representation. While its composition has been reshaped by the pro-/anti-2011 constitution and pro-/anti-normalization cleavages, these divisions affected mostly the framework of the cooperation, and less the actual practices of actors. As a result, collaboration between the Moroccan Front and the National Action Committee was common and materialized in the convening of the national rallies. The presence of intra-institutional actors in the National Action Committee also opened the possibility of incorporating other strategies, such as launching an institutional petition calling for the end of diplomatic relations with Israel (Bladi 13 January 2024). The use of this mechanism of institutional participation showcases the interrelation between the practical and institutional opposition spaces.
In terms of digital opposition practices, calls for the boycott of Israeli and international companies operating in occupied Palestinian territories were widespread since the 2008–2009 Gaza war. However, in 2018 there was a leap forward in these practices due to the experience of a broadly supported consumer boycott of three prominent Moroccan brands and subsidiaries closely associated with the regime (Imane and Jamal Reference Imane and Jamal2023). In 2023–2025, the companies targeted for their links or support to Israel were H&M and Starbucks (both accused of expressing support for Israel on social media), Zara (one of whose advertising campaigns was perceived as imitating murdered Palestinian bodies), McDonalds (impacted by its Israeli franchise’s decision to provide free food to Israeli soldiers) and the Moroccan couscous brand DARI (accused of having economic ties to Israeli food exporter Tomer) (Tel Quel 1 December 2023; Daquila Reference Daquila2024: 86).Footnote 2 Controversy also sparked after the announcement of McDonalds as the official sponsor of the Moroccan national football team (RFI March 2024). Relatedly, an increasingly noteworthy practical opposition space was now emerging in Morocco’s football stadiums, where fans expressed solidarity with the Palestinians and condemnation of Israel through chants and symbols since the beginning of the war on Gaza – as well as in the earlier 2022 World Cup – in line with the norms of Arabism (Belcastro Reference Belcastro2022).
Discursive opposition space
We approach the discursive opposition space in Morocco as one shaped by the red lines shielding Islam, ‘national territorial integrity’ and the monarchy – embodied in the motto ‘Allah, al-Watan, al-Malik’. These are the key fault lines that determine political alignment with the Moroccan regime, defining the political actors’ discursive scope and leading to self-censorship (Smith and Loudiy Reference Smith and Loudiy2005: 1093). Red lines are broad and ‘susceptible to change’, with their scope and the issues they encompass varying over time (Colin Reference Colin2024: 6). The signing of the normalization agreement between the 2008–2009 and 2023–2024 wars on Gaza heightened the dissonance between official and opposition frameworks and expanded the scope of red lines to include the Palestinian issue. This shift coincided with declining support for the transactional argument justifying the bilateral normalization with Israel by prioritizing gains in the international recognition of Rabat’s sovereignty over Western Sahara.
The discursive dimension of opposition was relatively less prominent during the 2008–2009 Gaza war because both the monarchy-led official response and the domestic protest movement embraced the same primary ideological and normative framework, based on the norms of Arabism. For that reason, while the discursive opposition between Arab regimes and people – or ‘street’ – was widespread during this and other similar protest cycles, the Moroccan monarchy itself was not usually the target of specific attacks. Only some voices deplored Rabat authorities’ attitude of ‘indifference’ or ‘neutrality’ on the 2008–2009 war, and the fact that they were limiting themselves to issuing ‘condemnation statements’ to ‘calm Moroccan public opinion’ (ODT 29 December 2008). Generally speaking, the ‘red line’ prohibiting criticism of the king was not crossed.
Regarding the taboo concerning ‘national territorial integrity’, this was not directly at stake in the 2008–2009 context but came up in an interesting coincidental manner. Only nine days after Venezuela expelled the Israeli ambassador in protest against the Gaza offensive, Rabat announced the closure of its embassy in Caracas due to the ‘growing hostility of the Venezuelan authorities regarding the issue of the territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Morocco and the recent measures to support the pseudo SADR [Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic]’ (MAEC 15 January 2009). Although the two diplomatic crises were not originally connected, discursive interferences became inevitable. Moroccan opposition actors such as the AMDH, the National Action Committee and AMALP would greet Venezuela and its president for their support of the Palestinian people, just as Caracas accused Rabat of ‘opting for Israel’ (Al Quds Al Arabi 27 January 2009). As a justification of the alleged Moroccan violation of the norms of Arabism, some national media explained that ‘between Taza and Gaza … the Moroccan authorities [had] chosen to defend the foundations of the country’ (Aujourd’hui Le Maroc 21 January 2009).
When it comes to the discursive red line concerning Islam, this was more of a divisive issue that affected the internal cohesion and relationships between the various components of the pro-Palestinian movement, than one demarcating their common positionality vis-à-vis the regime. Notwithstanding efforts to join forces and organize collective action in an inclusive and transactional manner, the Moroccan ‘rejection front’ remained pierced by distrust and tensions between secular left-wing and Islamist actors (Vairel Reference Vairel2005a: 630). Such tensions were particularly prominent within the National Action Committee (Interview 19 October 2007). While the AWI acknowledged this umbrella group’s merit as ‘the only organization that brings together all of the Moroccan political forces, without excluding any sector’ (Interview 4 December 2007-B), the AMDH repeatedly informed its leadership of disagreements with some slogans used in the protests, which its members saw as denoting an ‘Islamization of the cause’ (Interview 31 October 2007; Interview 25 October 2007 and 26 November 2007). The secular versus Islamist competition was not just a symbolic one over the meaning of the protests; it also involved disputes about the numbers, visibility and media coverage of demonstrators of each persuasion in the various sit-ins and marches (see Bennani-Chraïbi Reference Bennani-Chraïbi2008).
During the 2023–2025 war, the discursive framework of the Moroccan regime was fundamentally misaligned with that of the opposition. The latter would thus indirectly challenge the country’s red lines by addressing the regime’s foreign policy and, to a lesser extent, the Western Sahara conflict. Crucially, the 2020 normalization with Israel had changed Morocco’s official stance towards Israel, prompting a repositioning of actors (Casani and Colin Reference Casani and Colin2023, Reference Casani and Colin2024). The stark dissonance (Brouksy Reference Brouksy2024) between official and opposition was exemplified by the very first statements of the Moroccan government and the AMDH following 7 October. As noted above, the former ‘[condemned] attacks against civilians wherever they may be’ and ‘[stressed] that dialogue and negotiation remain the only way to achieve a comprehensive and lasting solution to the Palestinian question’ (MAEC 7 October 2023). Meanwhile, the latter expressed solidarity with the Palestinian resistance, reaffirming the Palestinians’ right to self-determination and condemning imperialist support for Israel, but also ‘[demanding] the Moroccan state to immediately withdraw from normalization with the racist Zionist entity’ (AMDH 7 October 2023). This opposition framing equating normalization to complicity with Israel and a double betrayal – of both the Palestinian and the Moroccan people – was central to the 2024 protests. Most notably, this framework allowed to depict a common opposition stance against normalization (Moroccan Front 15 May 2024a) that directly targeted Morocco’s foreign policy towards Israel – for instance, through slogans such as ‘Palestine is honesty, normalization is treason’ (Moroccan Front 15 May 2024b).Footnote 3
Even though the normalization agreement galvanized opposition actors around a domestic target, direct criticism of the monarchy remained limited. This could be explained by the ongoing repression of critical voices on the grounds of the ‘inviolability’ of the monarch and its role in foreign policy. Charges for ‘offence to the person of the king’ can be brought forward even when the monarch is not quoted directly, as in the cases of social media activism mentioned above (Jeune Afrique 12 April 2024). Oppositions actors adapted by focusing on the closest targets available. For instance, there were widespread calls to boycott the Rabat music festival Mawazine, sponsored by the palace, in June 2024. Chanting ‘What does Palestine need, parties and Mawazine?’, the boycott of the royal initiative was advocated on the grounds that celebrating during a genocide was ‘insensitive’ (New Arab 23 May 2024).
The consensus around the transactional element of the normalization agreement became also increasingly challenged during the 2023–2025 crisis. Morocco’s ‘territorial integrity’ remained very much a matter of consensus and taboo exempt from public questioning, though subordinating Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara to normalization with Israel would be exceptionally decried in one of the interviews as ‘asking an occupation to justify your occupation’ (Interview 5 January 2024). On the other hand, media appearances of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu showing maps with a border between Morocco and Western Sahara caused great agitation on social media (Le Monde 31 May 2024). The outcry caused was also framed by the opposition as ‘an opportunity to pull [Morocco] out of the quagmire … saving us from the deal of shame’ (The Voice 30 May 2024). More broadly, in terms of public opinion, endorsement of the normalization–Western Sahara connection was evident in the fact that support for the former peaked at 31% following the 2020 agreement and US recognition of Morocco’s sovereignty over the disputed territory. Yet, Arab Barometer surveys indicated that support for normalization plummeted after the start of the 2023–2025 war on Gaza, dropping to 13% (Arab Barometer 2024; see Benstead Reference Benstead2019: 10–11).
Although struggles for discursive control over Islam were limited, one example was the government’s ban on imams calling for ‘jihad’ in Friday sermons (Le360 6 November 2024). While this decision can be seen as driven by the convergence of red lines on Islam and foreign policy, it was explicitly condemned by the left-wing political party PSU. In general, internal discursive divisions between Islamist and leftist movements seemed less prominent during the 2023–2025 protest cycle. This was largely due to the opposition’s success in fostering cross-ideological coalitions, as well as the fact that normalization provided a common domestic target that tamed these differences, reinforcing instead the pro- and anti-normalization cleavage (Interview 27 April 2024).
Conclusions
This article has examined the influence of foreign policy on domestic spaces for opposition in an authoritarian context. Taking the case of Morocco, and the evolving positionality, relationships, practices and discourses of different domestic actors during and between Israel’s wars on Gaza of 2008–2009 and 2023–2025, we sought to nuance the scholarly understanding of the interaction between international and internal spheres in the shaping of opposition to authoritarian regimes. By developing and applying a tri-dimensional understanding of the political spaces for opposition, the article shows the intricacies of such interactions, bringing forward both elements of continuity and change in each of the three spaces as well as the interplay between them. Besides this analytical proposal, our research contributes to the existing FPA literature on foreign policy and domestic politics by providing rich exploratory findings from an extreme case which supports inductive theory development.
Our Morocco case study and within-case cases show that, in the institutional space, foreign policy contributed to consolidating the schism between included and excluded (opposition) actors and their respective networks within and without institutional politics, which had already been previously deepened following the 2011 Arab uprisings (see Table 1). This was evident in the contrast between the collaboration between intra-institutional and extra-institutional actors during the 2008–2009 and the 2023–2025 Gaza wars. In the latter case, avenues for convergence were reduced to a minimum and became contingent on the actors’ stances on Morocco’s normalization with Israel. In parallel, the evolution of the regime’s red lines narrowed the discursive space for any such opposition. Within Morocco’s institutions, criticism of foreign policy became virtually impossible; outside them, it remained viable yet exposing critics to increased repression. Although the outstanding scale of the 2023–2025 Gaza war may provide an alternative explanation for these changes, the article sheds light on the impact of Morocco–Israel normalization, which further pushed the Palestinian issue from the foreign policy to the domestic political sphere. Finally, the practical opposition space seems to be the least directly affected by evolutions in the foreign policy framework. Besides a broad continuity in terms of opposition practices, though, here we see actors undergoing an incremental learning process – in terms of both cross-ideological coalition-building between Islamist and secular left-wing actors and strategies such as the use of boycotts. This also consolidates the argument that opposition outside institutional arenas is ‘a living and creative actor’ capable of adaptation and transformation (Yabanci Reference Yabanci2024: 432).
Table 1. Effects of Morocco’s Foreign Policy Towards Israel and Palestine on Domestic Opposition Spaces
In sum, this article has shown that the relative alignment of opposition actors with the regime’s foreign policy largely impacts domestic spaces for opposition. Despite recognizing that the salience of the norms of Arabism for the Moroccan regime may seem to be declining (Maddy-Weitzman Reference Maddy-Weitzman2024: 25), this article shows that the Palestinian questions continue to prompt large-scale mobilizations that involve a broad set of actors. As the regime struggles to walk the fine line between formal solidarity with Palestine and ‘normal’ relations with Israel, and violence against Palestinians persists, the question remains as to whether the monarchy will change its foreign policy to soothe domestic opposition. We showed that domestic opposition to this foreign policy is likely to endure.
Supplementary material
The supplementary material for this article can be found at https://doi.org/10.1017/gov.2025.10022.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank our research participants for their time and availability. We would also like to acknowledge the precious feedback received on an earlier version of this research at the 75th IPSA Anniversary Conference (Lisbon, September 2024). Finally, we thank the anonymous peer-reviewers for their insightful comments, which considerably sharpened our contribution.
Ethics statement
This article brings together findings from different doctoral and postdoctoral research projects conducted between 2007 and 2024, each of which followed the ethics procedures required by the respective author’s institution at the time.
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