« There’s something going on between Moroccans and Israelis. »
Ghita Lahlou
(…) On the Moroccan side, the day after the Oslo I agreements were signed in Washington in September 1993, the first Moroccan delegation visited Jerusalem and Tel Aviv in October. The Israelis had already launched preparations for what was to be the Casablanca economic summit for the Maghreb-Middle East region in November 1994. The Moroccan delegation was received with all honors. Their stay lasted 10 days.
At Jerusalem’s King David Palace, Yitzhak Rabin gave a speech that Moroccan participants remembered thirty years later, in which the Israeli Prime Minister and signatory of the Oslo Accords asserted that “Israel has many friends in the world, but [that] Morocco’s friendship is special.”
The Moroccan delegation was led by royal advisor André Azoulay and industrialist Driss Jettou, who was appointed to the Ministry of Trade and Industry in the Moroccan government a month later, then to Finance (1997), the Interior (2001), the Prime Minister’s Office (2002-2007) and the presidency of the Court of Auditors in 2012; businessmen Abdelkader Alj (Flour mills and canneries), Mohamed Kabbaj (Building and public works), Kamil Benjelloun (IT equipment and services), Robert Assaraf (ONA Group), Mohamed Hamdouch (ONA Group) and Jo O’Hana (former Member of Parliament until 1992, active in the sugar industry, real estate, cardboard and paper) are part of the delegation..
The aim of the visit was to meet Palestinian and Israeli politicians and initiate initial business contacts. At the Knesset, they were received by the institution’s vice-president Rafi Edri, and Yaël Dayan, the general’s daughter, acted as tour guide. In East Jerusalem, the Moroccans are received at Orient House by Fayçal Husseini (…).
In the Moroccan private sector, Steve O’Hana, nephew of Moroccan businessman and former Member of Parliament Jo O’Hana, renowned for his closeness to former minister and royal advisor Ahmed Réda Guédira, will chair the CGEM’s Morocco-Israel Business Council from its creation in December 2020 to May 2022. He is very active in boosting business relations between the two countries.
S. O’Hana asserts his desire “to put things on a long-term footing, not wanting a one-off partnership.” After welcoming Israeli Economy Minister Orna Barbivai to Casablanca in February 2022, the Morocco-Israel Business Council led a first major mission of Moroccan business leaders to Tel Aviv in March 2022. In May, Steve O’Hana will be replaced by Ghita Lahlou, a former executive at the ONA holding company, a director at Sanlam insurance (formerly Saham) and a close associate of Moulay Hafid Elalamy (…)
In the business world, the Confédération Générale des Entreprises du Maroc is creating a Morocco-Israel Business Council as of January 2021, chaired by Casablanca-based businessman Steve O’Hana, and formalizing its working relationship with its Israeli counterpart IEBO, the Israeli Employers and Business Organization. The CGEM will announce the organization of a mission of Moroccan businessmen to Israel for December 12, 2021. On the agenda: visits to industrial and agricultural sites, B-to-B meetings, meetings with its IEBO counterpart and a visit to the Shimon Peres Center in Jaffa. The mission was scheduled to coincide with Royal Air Maroc’s inaugural Casablanca-Tel Aviv flight. In its press release announcing this Israeli-Moroccan first, the CGEM stated that “the mission aims to build, with our Israeli counterparts, win-win business partnerships that will bring growth to our national companies” (…).