Moroccan Air Force plane lands in Israel for military drill

A Moroccan warplane arrived at the Hatzor airbase in central Israel to participate in a military exercise, Israeli media reported on Sunday.

A Moroccan Lockheed C-130 Hercules landed on Sunday morning at the airbase, State-run Kan 11 said, without giving any further details.

"We are cooperating with a different group of foreign countries and armies, while conducting exercises, high-level meetings and joint research," the broadcaster quoted an unnamed Israeli army spokesperson as saying.

The spokesperson said the Israeli military will not address the identities of the foreign armies participating in the exercise, "given the sensitivity" of it.

Royal Moroccan Air Force C130 landing Israeli AFB Hatzor now
cna-ok pic.twitter.com/xMgkwXlnia

— avi scharf (@avischarf) July 4, 2021

Barak Ravid, political commentator for the Israeli website Walla, stressed that security cooperation between Israel and Morocco is a "very sensitive issue from a political point of view", noting that news agencies recently revealed that ships belonging to the Moroccan and Israeli navies will participate in an international manoeuvre in the Black Sea.

According to Haaretz, military ties between Israel and Morocco mainly involve intelligence cooperation and arms trade.

The two officially normalised their ties in December last year under a controversial US-led agreement, slammed by the Palestinians and much of the Arab world as a betrayal of the Palestinian cause.

Then-US president Donald Trump recognised the disputed Western Sahara territory to be under Rabat's sovereignty in return for normalising with Israel.

The agreement came after similar controversial normalisation deals between Israel and Sudan, the UAE and Bahrain in the same year.