Politics & Diplomacy

A US House report called Ceuta Moroccan weeks before the surge

Times of PalestineNEW13m ago · 03/08 · 00:02

Published Monday, August 3, 2026 · 00:02 Jerusalem timeUpdated Monday, August 3, 2026 · 00:10 Jerusalem time

Graphic: Times of Palestine

Original Reporting

By TOP Newsdesk · 6 min read

A week after tens of thousands of people surged across Morocco's border into the Spanish exclave of Ceuta, the claim that Rabat engineered the crisis in coordination with Israel to punish Madrid for its defense of Palestine is hardening from a social-media narrative into a political argument made on the floor of the US Congress. The first edition of this brief reported that no published evidence connected Rabat to Tel Aviv. That remains true of the surge itself — nobody has produced proof that anyone coordinated it. But the fuller record, assembled here, shows something the first edition understated: a documented American and Israeli paper trail running alongside the crisis, laid down before, during and years ahead of it.

The crisis#

In the final days of July, Spanish authorities counted tens of thousands of crossings into Ceuta — roughly 50,000 by early counts, with later estimates reaching 60,000 — the largest border event in the enclave's history, and at least 57 people died in the water and the crush, according to accounts carried by CNN, NBC News and Middle East Eye. Spanish officials and reporters at the fence described Moroccan border guards as largely absent while the crowds gathered — the detail that turned a migration story into a diplomatic one, because it repeated the pattern of May 2021, when Rabat relaxed its side of the fence and some 10,000 people crossed in two days after Madrid quietly hospitalized the Polisario Front's leader. Spain declared a state of emergency in the enclave. The government of Pedro Sánchez — which recognized the State of Palestine, adopted the word genocide for Israel's war on Gaza, cancelled arms contracts with Israeli suppliers and refused its bases to the American air campaign against Iran — read the surge as pressure, and Israeli officials did little to discourage the reading.

The Washington paper trail#

Here the record has substance the first edition of this brief missed. On July 15 — two weeks before the surge — the US House passed H.R. 8595, the State Department appropriations bill for 2027, by 217 to 209. The committee report accompanying it states that "the Spanish-administered cities of Ceuta and Melilla are located in Moroccan territory and remain the subject of Morocco's longstanding claim," supports "diplomatic engagement between Morocco and Spain on the future status" of the cities, and directs forty million dollars to Morocco — twenty million in security-investment funds and twenty million in foreign military financing. Moroccan outlets celebrated the language when the committee adopted it in May. Every House Republican voted for the bill except one: Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who after the surge accused his own party of hypocrisy. "Two weeks ago the House passed a bill that green-lighted the transfer of Spanish territory to Morocco," he wrote on X, in posts reported by Newsweek and LBC. "Every Republican except me voted for it, but now THEY are acting shocked at the invasion." Precision matters here, and cuts both ways: the language sits in a non-binding committee report, not in the bill's text, and transfers nothing — but a congressional committee formally describing Spanish-held territory as "located in Moroccan territory," attached to money for Rabat, fourteen days before Rabat's border guards stood aside, is a documented fact, not a theory. The report's Morocco provisions were championed by Representative Mario Díaz-Balart, the subcommittee's chairman.

What Israel has said — and not said#

The Israeli record is split between official policy and official rhetoric. In April, Israel's ambassador to Spain, Dana Erlich, dismissed reports that Israel might back Morocco's claim to the enclaves, saying the issue was "not relevant" for the Netanyahu government — the on-record denial, reported by Hespress. The same month, an opinion piece in the Israeli outlet Ynet urged exactly that policy: that Israel use its influence in Washington to help Morocco "recover" Ceuta and Melilla as payback for Madrid's positions. Then came the crisis, and a serving Israeli official moved the rhetoric from the op-ed page to the UN. Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, taunted Spain in remarks reported by the Times of Israel: Spain, "which never misses an opportunity to lecture Israel," should explain "why it still maintains colonial enclaves in Africa." An Israeli ambassador adopting Morocco's framing of Ceuta's status, mid-crisis, is not proof of coordination — and it is precisely the kind of statement the coordination narrative feeds on, which is why Al Jazeera devoted an explainer to how the crisis chilled the already frozen Madrid–Tel Aviv relationship while the Jerusalem Post dismissed the coordination claims as conspiracy theory.

The spyware precedent#

The narrative's believers also point backward, to a file that is documented beyond dispute. In 2021 and 2022, forensic investigations by the Pegasus Project and Spain's own government established that the phones of Prime Minister Sánchez and Defence Minister Margarita Robles were infected with Pegasus — spyware built and licensed by Israel's NSO Group — and that President Macron of France was targeted for infection. Reporting across the European press identified Morocco as the suspected operator; Rabat denies it, and no court has ruled. What the episode established is not that Morocco coordinated the Ceuta surge with Israel; it is that Israeli-made offensive technology has already been deployed, in the recent past, against the leadership of Spain and France in operations attributed to Morocco. That precedent is why the coordination narrative finds ready believers — a fact about the record, not a substitute for evidence about the surge.

The ledger, weighed honestly#

What remains unproven is the specific claim: that Rabat and Tel Aviv coordinated the border surge. No document, no official statement, no reporting in any major outlet establishes it, and Morocco needs no outside prompting for a tactic it demonstrably used alone in 2021, over Western Sahara — the file, not Gaza, on which Rabat pressures Madrid. Morocco's government has issued no response to the allegation; its standing Palestinian record — chairing the Al-Quds Committee, delivering aid to Gaza — still cuts against the frame. But the honest ledger is now thicker on the documented side than the first edition of this brief allowed: a House committee formally endorsing Morocco's territorial claim with money attached, two weeks before the crisis; a serving Israeli UN ambassador calling the enclaves colonial while the crisis ran; Israeli spyware on Madrid's and Paris's phones in the file's prehistory. Alignment is documented. Coordination is not. The distinction is the story, and this newspaper will keep it sharp in both directions.

The Ramallah signal#

Which gives Sunday's protocol in Ramallah its weight. Vice President Hussein al-Sheikh received Morocco's ambassador to Palestine, Abdel Rahim Meziane, the official WAFA agency reported, discussing the two countries' longstanding fraternal relations, with al-Sheikh sending congratulations to King Mohammed VI for Throne Day. Calendar diplomacy on its face — and, read against this week, a message both capitals wanted sent: whatever is alleged about Rabat's hand at Ceuta, Morocco is tending its Palestinian standing in public, and Ramallah is receiving it warmly. The story changes when evidence does; the ledger above says exactly where that line sits tonight.