Donald Trump Has Just Traded Western Sahara Like a Victorian Colonialist
The Trump-brokered deal between Morocco and Israel normalizes relations between the two states. But the outgoing president bought Morocco's agreement by endorsing its ownership of Western Sahara — making the US the only major state to rubber-stamp an occupation regime condemned by international law.
A post of the Polisario Front in Western Sahara. (Wikimedia Commons)
In what may be his last major foreign policy initiative as president, on December 10 Donald Trump announced a US-brokered agreement that will see Morocco become the third Arab country since August to normalize ties with Israel.
Following deals with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, the White House hailed this agreement as “advancing regional stability.” But, as Saharawi journalist Ahmed Ettanji tells Jacobin, its real effect is to “legitimize two occupations — that of the Israeli occupation of pre-1967 Palestinian territory and that of the Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara.”
Under the agreement, the United States becomes the first major power in the world to recognize Moroccan sovereignty over the illegally annexed Western Sahara — a move which flies in the face of numerous UN resolutions and a ruling from the International Court of Justice.
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