Moroccan minister says Arab Spring will lead to liberation of Palestine

A Moroccan minister of the ruling moderate Islamist Justice and Development Party (PJD) told a crowd in Rabat that he anticipates Palestine to be liberated as more “walls” protecting Israel continue to fall during the Arab Spring, Moroccan Media reported on Tuesday.

Abdelkader Aâmara, minister of industry, trade and new technologies, was speaking during an event to commemorate the 2009 war on Gaza organized by the Moroccan initiative for the support of Palestine, Nossra and a student initiative against normalization with Israel.

Aâmara, a member of Gaza Freedom Flotilla, decried the small audience at the event, saying that people have to “participate in such events because they are a media message that should reach the world.”

Meanwhile, Khaled al-Sufyani, a Moroccan activist for a group that supports Iraq and Palestine, seconded Aâmara by saying that the liberation of Palestine will be in the “near future.”

“Victory over the Zionist project is coming, as my brother Aâmara has said a while ago,” according to Nossra, a web site.

Sufyani warned Moroccans not to rely on prime minister and PJD chief Abdelilah Benkirane alone to support Palestine. He accused André Azoulay, a Moroccan Jew and a senior adviser to King Mohammed VI of Morocco, of pushing the kingdom toward normalization with Israel.

In the face of deepening regional instability, Israel has said it would boost defense spending by about 6 percent ($780 million) this year.

Israel will spend an additional 3 billion shekels ($780 million) on defense this year. The 2012 budget had been projected at around 50 billion shekels ($13 billion), broadly unchanged from last year.

“Given the abundant challenges and threats surrounding us, it would be a mistake, a big mistake even, to cut the defense budget,” Netanyahu said, according to reporters.

Israel faces a strategic map that has been radically redrawn in the past 12 months.

It looks likely to lose regional alliances with Turkey and Egypt and faces a possible entente between the two main Palestinian factions, an uprising in neighboring Syria and growing fears over Iran’s nuclear program.