This Muslim Nation Secretly Leaked Arab Leaders' Secrets to Israel
While Arab leaders gathered to discuss strategies for confronting Israel, a secret operation was unfolding from within their meeting rooms. Moroccan intelligence secretly recorded the conversations of Arab leaders and subsequently handed the results to Israel.
The incident occurred in 1965 when Arab leaders, military commanders, and intelligence chiefs arrived in Casablanca, Morocco, to attend the Arab League Summit. The attendees included representatives from Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and other Arab nations.
The conference was convened to discuss military readiness against Israel. During the meetings, participants disclosed troop strengths, weaponry, and strategies for potential warfare. It was even reported that the King of Jordan and the President of Egypt debated strategies to defeat Israel.
However, unbeknownst to the participants, King Hassan II of Morocco permitted the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, to closely monitor the conference.
“A joint team led by Peter Zvi Malkin and Rafi Eitan from Israel’s internal security service and Mossad arrived in Casablanca, and the Moroccan authorities closed off an entire hotel floor for them,” stated former Military Intelligence chief, Major General Shlomo Gazit, to the Israeli news site Ynet.
Nevertheless, mid-meeting, King Hassan II requested that Mossad cease the operation due to fears that their presence might be discovered. In its place, Moroccan intelligence would secretly record and report all discussions of the Arab leaders to Israel.
Two years later, when battles erupted between Israel and Arab nations, these recordings were said to have become vital information for Israel. History records that during the conflict known as the Six-Day War, Israel successfully defeated the involved Arab nations because they were privy to the war strategies.
Based on this, quoting reports from the Israeli news site Ynet, Prime Minister Levi Eshkol described the 1965 operation as “one of the greatest successes of Israeli intelligence.”
The operation was one of several fragments of secret cooperation between Morocco and Israel that had been established since 1963. In research titled “Israel and Morocco: From Clandestine Partnership to the Abraham Accords,” it is noted that the initial cooperation between the two nations occurred during the reign of King Hassan II.
Hassan II chose to forge ties with the Western bloc led by the United States, rather than siding with Muslim nations and the Eastern bloc. One of his policies included facilitating the emigration of approximately 100,000 Moroccan Jews to Israel-Palestine, the United States, Canada, and France.
At that time, Morocco possessed the largest Jewish community in the Arab world, with around 270,000 Moroccan Jews living within the kingdom.
In exchange, Morocco received payments from Israel. However, entering the 1980s, the relationship between Morocco and Israel began to move into the public eye. Both nations started meeting and establishing ties through the creation of liaison offices.
This relationship has since continued to develop. Quoting Al Jazeera, Israel and Morocco have agreed to enhance their diplomatic relations, including arms trade and upgrading the status of their respective representations to embassies, with the appointment of ambassadors for both countries set for 2026.