The ships that supply Armament to Israel do not fit in Tangier. As much as the city houses the largest port in Africa, from the other shore of the Strait they have been taking the streets for weeks to prevent the Moroccan government from allowing scale to ship to ships that take ammunition to the Zionist state.
If at the beginning of April thousands of people in Rabat and Casablanca They joined a wave of protests throughout the Arab world against genocide in Gaza, the 1,500 that congregated last Sunday in Tangier asked for something very concrete: that their port was not an accomplice of a massacre in which Israel has killed at least 51,300 Palestinians.
This week, Tangier-Med ports have moved components of the F-35 war airplanes from the Detroit Maersk, from the US, to the maersk Nexoe. According to Declassified UK, the link has already sailed to Haifa and will arrive at the Israeli port before May. From there, the cargo will be taken to the Nevatim base, where much of the Netanyahu Benjamin’s army air arsenal is parked.
The ‘death Ships’
During the last months, a tide of Palestinian flags has sneaked once a week by the Callejas de la Medina until reaching the port of Tangier-Ville, which only transports passengers to Tarifa. Down there they wait for riots: sometimes they get access to the terminal, others no.
In the manifestations, some banners pray: “No to the ships of death!” Others condemn attacks on hospitals, childhood and the people of Gaza. However, among these messages a direct request is sneaks into the Moroccan government: that Rabat breaks the relations established in 2020 with Israel.
“The people want the fall in naturalization [de las relaciones con Israel]”, Resonates in the Medina. The song reminds the protests that shook Egypt, Syria, Libya and other Arab majority countries throughout the past decade. Those ‘springs’ arrived shyly to Morocco, but the manifestations against the genocide in Gaza are opening a small window to criticize the government more than ten years later.
“We want the fall of the collaborative regime. That is far away, but for the moment these protests are being a great advance,” says Jadiya, a middle -aged woman. Yusef, a Tetuán activist, sentences: “The regime insists on betraying Palestine and allowing the transit of these ships that are nothing other than tools to kill our brothers in Palestine. Being here also means cleaning a part of the shame that Moroccan authorities make us feel.”
In the protests, sectors of Moroccan society converge to which few other causes would join. Behind the headboard sion their shoulders sion regular and Hasan Benhajeh. The first is a militant anti-river Jewish activist of the Marxist-Leninist movement M23 since its foundation in the 1970s. The second, leader of the Islamist Association Justice and Charity, which follows the precepts of Shij Abdesalam Yasín.
In the demonstrations of the last weeks, Raduán Al-Qstit, a member of the Justice and Charity Group to which Yasín belongs, arrested last February for organizing the protests on Facebook, is also remembered. In March he was convicted with positions such as “insulting public officials in the exercise of their functions” and “encouragement to commit a crime or a foul by electronic means.” It will be imprisoned for two years.
At the tail of the march, Hasna Qotni leads a resounding female block. “We demand and raise the voice so that these ships do not contaminate and profane our water. This affects the dignity of all Moroccans who, since the signing of the peace agreement, have been asking and will continue to ask for the fall in normalization,” says Qotni, vice -coordinator of Moroccan women against normalization. “No to the ship of shame. No to the Zionist entity,” Angua Abdesaméd Fathi, vice coordinator of the Moroccan front for the defense of Palestine and against Zionism.
Already in the esplanade that looks at the port of Tangier-Ville, Zahra Akimi, of the left-handed democratic voice party, celebrates that the last demonstration has been able to reach end without problems with the riot. “We have realized that the pet —The Moroccan system, with all its repressive possibilities, is there to stop. ”Behind it the Strait is seen and points to the shore in front:“ I greet our Spanish neighbors, who have refused to send weapons to Israel. The Moroccan people are also in solidarity with Palestine. ”
From Algeciras to Tangier
In the same operation against which the Moroccans demonstrated last Sunday, three Spanish ports also participated. The Maersk Nexoe that sailed this week on the way to Israel stopped in Barcelona, Valencia and Algeciras before collecting the war cargo in Tangier, as reported by the solidarity network against the occupation of Palestine (Rescop) .
Since last November Madrid vetoed that two ships with weapons destined to Israel roasted in Algeciras and the US threatened with “corrective measures”, Maersk’s strategy was to derive the operations to the Moroccan ports of Tangier-Med and Casablanca. In addition, in cases like this, the stop in Morocco “does not appear in the public itinerary of the ship, in a repeated practice of concealment and opacity by Maersk, which has turned off its previous identification systems and hidden previous visits to Israel at least four times in 2025”, according to the solidarity network against the occupation of Palestine (rescop) and the campaign final to the trade of arms with Israel.
The Danish shipping company denies having transported weapons or ammunition to Israel, although it has a contract with the US government and has previously recognized shipments that “contain equipment related to the army” derived from “cooperation in security between the United States and Israel.” At the beginning of April, a Maersk representative confirmed to DeclasSIFIED UK that the Detroit and the Nexoe “transport containers with pieces of the F-35”, although “these shipments are made on behalf of the suppliers, not of the Israeli Ministry of Defense.”
From the beginning of the genocide in Gaza until September 2024, half of the 2,110 weapons shipments to Israel operated by Maersk went through Algeciras. Despite the “total embargo” that the Spanish government promised in November, the participation of Spanish ports in operations such as this week corroborate that the State’s blockers have made possible the supply of the war cargo to Israel, which has been killing the people of Gaza for 19 months.
