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The settlement plan for the old Western Sahara conflict, submitted by the United States to the UN Security Council, constitutes an unparalleled slippage in international relations. If it contributes to confirming an injustice, it invites the region to an uncertain future.
Through a document that tramples on the fundamental principles of international law, Washington plants, through narrow calculations and populist ambitions, a time bomb in the region whose detonation could, in the long term, carry away this chimerical peace.
The new American administration seeks to restore the dark pages of the CV of President Donald Trump, more concerned with his ego than with cardinal rights, through an illusory feat of peace in a region recognized as sensitive.
The pressure currently exerted by White House diplomats within the Security Council goes in the direction of the realization of this ambition intended to offer an equivocal feat of peace, among others, to the MAGA (Make America Great Again) base hostile to any involvement of the United States in external conflicts, particularly in the Middle East.
The eagerness of American advisors Steve Witcoff and Jared Kushner as well as his special envoy for the MENA region Mossad Boulos to materialize this achievement on behalf of Trump explains their confusion with regard to international legality and even more serious their contempt for the UN institutions supposed to regulate conflicts by the legal means that the USA established with the other founding countries in 1945.
The Americans, who took on the role of penholder within the UN Security Council by recording converging or divergent opinions in the preparation of the drafts of the resolutions, have today decided to codify Moroccan propaganda, whatever the odds on the back of international legality, ethics and morality.
Previously concerned with respecting formalities, the United States is directly involved in the resolution of conflicts outside the UN sphere, while putting all its weight behind it to establish a fait accompli. Yesterday in Gaza and today in Western Sahara despite the fact that this diktat constitutes a serious threat to the stability of the Maghreb and Sahel region.
A de jure and de facto occupation
This change in strategy reveals much more the blindness of the current tenants of the White House and the little credit they give to the future of a region, not least because of its wealth, its demographics and its geostrategic importance, whether for Europe or the rest of North Africa.
It is obvious that Morocco has invested, for years, in its logic of compromise, on Zionist lobbies, to the point of demanding recognition from Washington of the Moroccanness of Western Sahara in order to justify its adherence to the Abraham Accords in December 2020. A decision against the will of the Moroccan population which remains viscerally hostile to any rapprochement with the Hebrew State.
By now joining the clan of normalizers, Rabat considers having fulfilled its part of the contract and expects, a return on investments, to reap the dividends by imposing a de facto and de jure occupation of the Sahrawi territory.
This compromise is the result of years of misdirection, false propaganda and manipulation within American institutions, notably the Congress against Algeria.
Since 2007 when France suggested the idea of the autonomy plan to Morocco, Algeria has suffered a veritable smear campaign supported by pro-Zionist senators hidden within Congress. The accusations made against Algeria according to which it is the new Iran of the Maghreb, or those which attribute to it the intention of obtaining nuclear weapons or even its alleged proximity to the Hezbollah movement, are all vileities attached to the sinister bib of Moroccan diplomacy as revealed by the Wikileaks cables.
In the meantime, Algeria has remained faithful to its principles of defense of international legality and the right of peoples to self-determination, a posture that it has asserted including against its own allies and friends like Indonesia when it came to supporting the independence of Timor-Leste.
This is also the highlight of Algerian diplomacy since October 7, 2023 when it came to denouncing, whether within the Security Council or during meetings of Foreign Ministers, the Zionist savagery against the Palestinian population, while the head of Moroccan diplomacy Nasser Bourita rolled his thumbs, his mouth closed, while the Moroccan population pounded the streets to denounce Zionist crimes.
A region under chronic tension
A few hours before the Security Council’s verdict, there is no longer any need to demonstrate that the autonomy plan is a chimera through which Morocco is trying to establish an occupation. The outlines of this plan are completely non-existent and are left, according to American rhetoric, to the discretion of the two parties concerned, namely Morocco and the Polisario Front.
However, the Sahrawi movement has expressed its rejection of this solution and intends to turn its back on it if it is validated because it in no way meets its legitimate aspirations.
In addition, many Western diplomats are wondering about the fact that of the 17 non-autonomous territories listed in the tablets of the 4th UN decolonization commission, the result of resolution 1514 of 1960, about the objective reasons which pushed Washington and its allies to favor an outcome for the Sahrawi territory alone. However, territories like New Caledonia or the Falkland Islands are to this day subject to the French colonial force for one and the British for the other.
The amendment attempts initiated within the Security Council by Denmark and Slovenia, the two countries which reproduced the Algerian position, came up against American stubbornness which consists of pushing through their own version.
Negotiations within the Security Council are not immune to the pressures exerted on non-permanent members by the United States-France-Israel and United Arab Emirates quartet, which has become the torchbearer of an unprecedented violation of international legality.
This scenario thus helps to confirm, certainly, Moroccan expansionism and to establish a source of tension in the region, but it sows the seeds of chronic instability which postpones indefinitely any desire for reconciliation between the peoples of the region.
The alleged American negotiations to promote rapprochement between Morocco and Algeria to which Steve Witcoff and Mossad Boulos referred are of the order of Wishful thinking otherwise a caricatured ambition to the extent that the American attitude in Western Sahara cannot win the confidence of Algiers.
Especially since in a rapidly changing world marked by the appearance of new emerging forces and new alliances, Algeria does not exclude reviewing its paradigms and maps to consider new diplomatic avenues which will ensure, it is believed in Algiers, a better understanding of its future in the region far from the wishes of those who violate the principles of rights.