Key Takeaways:
- July 2026, not just a queue. EPRS first put ~80,000 crossings and at least 72 deaths; Spain later cited 141 deaths in the wider episode. Sánchez (3 Sept): no solid proof Morocco planned it; Moroccan control in those hours still needs looking at. Author (Chtatou): Ceuta is Spanish/EU law on African ground—Spain sees an EU border, Rabat an unfinished decolonization.
- Partner and pressure. The 1991 friendship treaty promises equality; EU “externalization” still makes Morocco Europe’s southern gatekeeper (Lavenex; Ferrer-Gallardo & Gabrielli on 2021). When Ceuta is hit, Europe becomes Spanish; when Brussels needs Rabat, Morocco is expected to police the fence. That is leverage, he says, not a proven plot.
- Pluralism, not a break with Brussels. U.S. Major Non-NATO Ally (2004), 1777 recognition; Israel ties since 2020, full embassies agreed 16 Sept 2026; U.S./Israeli lines on Western Sahara vs EU caution. Larémont: “sovereignty entrepreneurship.” Author’s ask: keep Europe’s markets, add Washington and Jerusalem so Rabat need not choose one capital. Convivencia, not “invasion” talk.
Introduction: Ceuta as a Test of the Euro-Mediterranean Order
The crisis surrounding Ceuta in the summer of 2026 revealed something considerably larger than a migration emergency. It exposed a structural contradiction at the heart of Morocco’s relationship with Spain and, more broadly, with the European Union: Europe requires Morocco as a strategic southern partner, yet the institutional architecture through which Europe exercises power can periodically transform that partnership into an asymmetrical relationship of pressure, conditionality and border securitization. Ceuta is consequently not merely a frontier but a geopolitical palimpsest on which several historical layers—Roman North Africa, Iberian expansion, Portuguese and Spanish possession, Moroccan sovereignty, European integration, postcolonial memory, migration externalization and contemporary strategic competition—overlap. The city is legally Spanish and institutionally European, geographically African and historically connected to the wider Moroccan territorial space; it is therefore precisely the sort of borderland in which the categories of Europe and Africa, sovereignty and proximity, coloniality and postcoloniality, security and mobility become difficult to separate (Gold, 2000; Vilar, 2003; Ferrer-Gallardo & Gabrielli, 2022).
The events of 30 July 2026 dramatically brought this contradiction to the surface. The European Parliamentary Research Service initially described an unprecedented mass crossing involving an estimated 80,000 people and at least 72 deaths, while subsequent Spanish official statements referred to 141 migrants who died during the broader episode. The discrepancy itself illustrates the fluidity of information surrounding a rapidly evolving crisis. What is less ambiguous is the magnitude of the event and its political consequences: Spain reinforced its border, sought greater European assistance, and the European Parliament subsequently demanded stronger protection for the Union’s external frontier while calling for continued cooperation with Morocco. At the same time, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez stated in Parliament that the Spanish government had received no solid evidence that Morocco had planned or carried out the mass crossing, although he acknowledged that the conduct of Moroccan authorities during the crucial hours required further investigation (European Parliamentary Research Service [EPRS], 2026; Government of Spain, 2026). This distinction is essential because an academically serious interpretation must distinguish between the existence of Moroccan leverage over migration routes and proof of direct governmental orchestration. The crisis nevertheless demonstrated how rapidly a humanitarian and migration emergency can become securitized and interpreted through the prism of sovereignty, territorial anxiety and historical memory.
For Morocco, the episode was particularly significant because it occurred against the background of a relationship with Spain that had been deliberately reconstructed around the language of friendship, good-neighbourliness, mutual respect, strategic partnership and convivencia. The 1991 Treaty of Friendship, Good-Neighbourliness and Cooperation explicitly invokes geographical proximity, centuries of historical interaction, common cultural heritage, equality of sovereignty, peaceful settlement of disputes, dialogue among cultures and the construction of a durable framework of political coexistence (Government of Spain, 1991). Yet the treaty’s conciliatory language coexists with a territorial anomaly that neither Spain nor Morocco has resolved: Spain regards Ceuta and Melilla as integral parts of its sovereign territory, while Morocco considers them remaining vestiges of an incomplete decolonization. As Ferrer-Gallardo and Kramsch (2012) have argued more broadly, the Spanish-Moroccan border is characterized by an extraordinary conjunction of geopolitical, functional and symbolic processes. It is simultaneously an EU border, a Spanish border, an African border, a postcolonial border and a heavily securitized migration frontier. Its very existence therefore embodies the contradictions of the contemporary Euro-Mediterranean order.
Morocco’s reaction should consequently not be understood as a simple abandonment of Europe or as an inevitable turn toward Washington and Jerusalem. It is better understood as part of a broader process of strategic diversification that has been developing for years. The United States provides Morocco with an unusually long-standing Atlantic relationship, reinforced by defence cooperation, Major Non-NATO Ally status and economic ties. Israel has become an increasingly important strategic partner following the restoration of diplomatic relations in 2020, with cooperation expanding into defence, technology, agriculture, water, investment, intelligence and innovation. The September 2026 decision to upgrade Moroccan-Israeli relations to full embassies and exchange ambassadors represents a further institutionalization of that partnership (Reuters, 2026). The trilateral American-Moroccan-Israeli relationship is consequently becoming an additional strategic axis through which Rabat can diversify its external relations without abandoning its indispensable European partnerships.
The strategic implication is therefore not that Morocco is replacing Europe with America and Israel. Europe remains indispensable economically, geographically, commercially, socially and institutionally. Rather, Rabat appears increasingly determined to ensure that European centrality does not become European strategic dependency. This distinction is fundamental. Morocco’s foreign policy under Mohammed VI has increasingly combined regional activism, economic diplomacy, African engagement, security cooperation and the cultivation of multiple external partnerships. Larémont (2026) characterizes this broader approach as a form of “sovereignty entrepreneurship,” whereby Morocco transforms territorial vulnerability into diplomatic leverage through issue linkage, recognition-seeking and diversified partnerships. The Ceuta crisis therefore needs to be placed within this longer trajectory rather than treated as an isolated episode.
This essay argues that the 2026 Ceuta crisis should be interpreted through several interconnected lenses: the historical construction of the enclave; the persistence of colonial memory; the asymmetrical structure of European border externalization; the political symbolism of Ceuta as a European territory in Africa; the transformation of Morocco’s relationship with the United States; the emergence of the Moroccan-Israeli strategic partnership; and the wider evolution of Moroccan diplomacy toward strategic pluralism. The resulting picture is not that of a Morocco abandoning Europe, but of a Morocco increasingly unwilling to remain strategically dependent upon a single European architecture.
Ceuta: From Mediterranean Frontier to European Enclave
The temptation to compare contemporary Ceuta with the Roman Empire must be approached carefully. Contemporary Spain cannot be equated with ancient Rome, and Ceuta was not incorporated into the Roman Empire in the same manner as many other North African territories. Yet the analogy can illuminate a deeper historical continuity: North Africa has repeatedly been conceptualized by Mediterranean powers as simultaneously a neighbouring space and a strategic frontier. The Roman occupation of Mauretania Tingitana incorporated much of northern Morocco into a Mediterranean imperial system centered upon military roads, administrative settlements and strategic coastal access. Volubilis became an important Roman centre, while the Strait of Gibraltar represented a strategic passage connecting the western Mediterranean with the Atlantic. Centuries later, Portuguese and Spanish expansion reproduced, in different historical circumstances, a logic in which North African coastal territories were treated as strategic extensions of Iberian security.
Ceuta is therefore inseparable from the history of Mediterranean frontier-making. The Portuguese conquest of 1415 initiated the modern phase of European possession, while the city became Spanish in the seventeenth century. Vilar (2003) traces the evolution of the frontier from the Portuguese occupation through successive territorial expansions in the nineteenth century and the reconfiguration of the boundary following the Spanish-Moroccan war of 1859–1860. Ferrer-Gallardo and Kramsch (2012) similarly emphasize that Ceuta and Melilla functioned historically as military garrisons and later as bases for colonial penetration. Their peculiar status was reinforced because they were not treated by Spain as ordinary colonial territories but as integral components of Spanish territory, a distinction that allowed their continued Spanish status after Moroccan independence in 1956.
Peter Gold’s pioneering study remains indispensable because it demonstrates that Ceuta and Melilla cannot be understood through a single analytical category. They are simultaneously Spanish territories, European Union spaces, African enclaves, migration gateways and objects of Moroccan territorial claims (Gold, 2000). His analysis also demonstrates that the salience of the enclaves within Spanish-Moroccan relations fluctuates according to wider political and economic circumstances. This insight remains highly relevant. Ceuta is not permanently at the centre of bilateral diplomacy; it becomes especially visible when broader relations deteriorate or when questions of sovereignty, migration or national identity become politically salient.
The physical border around Ceuta consequently possesses a symbolic significance that exceeds its immediate security function. A border fence separating two sovereign states is a conventional instrument of territorial control. A fortified fence enclosing a European Union territory located on the African continent, however, communicates a much more complicated political message. It divides not only jurisdictions but citizenship regimes, economic opportunities, legal spaces and historical narratives. As Ferrer-Gallardo and Gabrielli (2022) observe, the 2021 Ceuta episode demonstrated how European dependence upon Moroccan border management simultaneously created diplomatic leverage for Morocco and encouraged a further securitization of the European frontier. The border is thus not merely a line on a map; it is a site where power is continuously negotiated.
This explains the peculiar symbolic density of Ceuta. It is geographically African but politically European; historically connected to Morocco but legally administered by Spain; surrounded by a Moroccan hinterland but incorporated into the European border regime. The enclave consequently produces what might be called a geographical paradox: Europe is physically present in Africa while Africa is politically present at Europe’s external border. This paradox cannot be eliminated by legal declarations alone because it is reproduced daily by movement, trade, migration, policing and political discourse.
Colonial Memory and the Postcolonial Stratigraphy of the Strait
The historical dimension of Ceuta becomes even more significant when placed within the longer history of Spanish colonialism in northern Morocco. Josep Lluis Mateo Dieste (2025) has demonstrated that the Spanish colonial experience in northern Morocco remains deeply embedded in the postcolonial memories of both societies. The Spanish Protectorate from 1912 to 1956 generated complex memories of military confrontation, cooperation, paternalism, resistance and mutual cultural influence. These memories have never been completely reconciled. Spanish narratives have sometimes emphasized fraternity, cultural proximity and historical affinity, while Moroccan memories have often emphasized colonial domination, resistance and the unequal structures through which the relationship was constructed.
The contradiction is especially visible in the memory of the Rif War. Iglesias-Amorín and Velasco-de-Castro (2023) show how the conflict of 1921–1926 remains differently remembered in Spain and Morocco and how episodes such as Annual and the figure of Abdelkrim have acquired different political and symbolic meanings. Sasha Pack (2019) similarly places the Rif War within a wider history of European imperial rivalry and the making of the Hispano-African borderland. These memories matter because contemporary border politics rarely operates in a historical vacuum. Political communities remember previous encounters, and borders become repositories of those memories.
The Spanish-Maghribi relationship is consequently more complicated than the conventional language of a “shared history” suggests. Cañete and his co-authors have argued that the rhetoric of exceptionalism surrounding Spain and the Maghrib can obscure the asymmetries of colonial history and reproduce narratives of a harmonious common past that neglect conflict, domination and unequal power (Cañete et al., 2018). The concept of convivencia is therefore valuable but insufficient. It can illuminate centuries of interaction, exchange and coexistence, but if employed without historical criticism it can also romanticize a past marked by conquest and hierarchy.
The representation of the Moroccan as “Moro” constitutes another layer of this historical memory. Velasco de Castro (2014) demonstrates how the image of the “Moro” was politically instrumentalized under Franco and became part of a colonial ideology that simultaneously romanticized and subordinated Moroccan society. Manuela Marín (2009) has similarly shown the connections between Spanish Orientalism, Arab studies and colonial action in Morocco. Bolorinos Allard (2017) reveals how Spanish colonial photography represented Morocco through a mixture of medievalist nostalgia, Orientalism and claims of cultural fraternity. These studies are important not because they justify attributing a colonial mentality to contemporary Spain as a whole, but because they demonstrate that political language possesses historical genealogies.
The “Moro” should therefore be understood as a historical category rather than casually attributed as a contemporary Spanish attitude. It belongs to a repertoire of representation in which the North African Muslim could simultaneously be imagined as neighbour, enemy, exotic other, military adversary and cultural relative. During periods of political tension, such inherited categories can become available for reactivation. This is why the rhetoric of “invasion” surrounding migration deserves careful scrutiny. Once migrants are represented as a collective territorial threat rather than as heterogeneous individuals responding to economic, legal, political and social incentives, the border begins to acquire a civilizational dimension.
The danger is not that contemporary Spain is simply reproducing colonialism. Such an assertion would be historically crude. The more precise argument is that coloniality can survive in institutions, spatial arrangements and representational practices after formal colonial rule has disappeared. Boeyink, Sahraoui and Tyszler (2022) demonstrate precisely this point in their study of Ceuta and Melilla, arguing that colonial logics continue to influence mobility governance. The border therefore carries historical residues even when the political actors operating it no longer describe themselves in colonial terms.
The 1991 Treaty and the Promise of Symmetrical Partnership
The 1991 Treaty of Friendship, Good-Neighbourliness and Cooperation represents one of the most important attempts to overcome this historical inheritance. Its language is strikingly ambitious. The treaty refers to close geographical proximity, centuries of historical interaction, a shared cultural heritage and the need to construct a permanent framework of political coexistence. It explicitly recognizes sovereign equality, peaceful settlement of disputes and dialogue among cultures and civilizations. It also establishes mechanisms for cooperation in defence, economic affairs, culture, education, law, consular relations and the fight against terrorism and organized crime (Government of Spain, 1991).
The treaty is therefore more than a diplomatic document. It embodies a political philosophy: proximity should generate cooperation rather than confrontation, historical interaction should produce mutual understanding rather than suspicion, and geographical interdependence should encourage equality rather than hierarchy. Yet Ceuta demonstrates the limits of this vision. Territorial sovereignty creates a structural asymmetry that ordinary bilateral cooperation cannot completely dissolve.
For Spain, Ceuta is sovereign Spanish territory and an external frontier of the European Union. The Spanish government therefore regards its defence as a matter of territorial integrity and national security. During the 2026 crisis, Madrid reaffirmed its commitment to Ceuta while simultaneously stressing the necessity of cooperation with Morocco. The position is internally coherent: a sovereign state is expected to defend its territory, and Spain’s membership in the European Union makes the protection of its external frontier simultaneously a European matter.
For Morocco, however, Ceuta forms part of a wider historical question of territorial decolonization. The Moroccan position is embedded in a political imagination that does not easily separate Ceuta and Melilla from the unfinished territorial history of northern Morocco. The resulting difference can be summarized analytically without reducing either position to caricature: Spain sees an EU external border; Morocco sees an African territory under European sovereignty. These interpretations are not symmetrical in their legal status, but they are both politically consequential.
Europeanization has altered the balance of the dispute. Once Ceuta becomes part of the EU’s external border regime, a bilateral Spanish-Moroccan question is partially transformed into a relationship between Morocco and a collective European system. This is precisely where the language of an “EU empire,” if used carefully as a metaphor rather than a literal description, becomes analytically provocative. The EU is not an empire in the classical Roman or colonial sense. Yet its economic, regulatory, legal and institutional power can create profound asymmetries in external relations. The problem for Morocco is therefore not simply that Europe is powerful but that European power can become concentrated around Spanish territorial interests whenever Ceuta is securitized.
Morocco as Europe’s Southern Security Partner
The central contradiction of contemporary Euro-Moroccan relations is that Europe needs Morocco precisely because Morocco lies outside Europe. Morocco occupies a crucial geographical position in the Western Mediterranean and along Atlantic migration routes. The EU has consequently externalized significant elements of its border-management regime toward Moroccan territory. This process has been extensively theorized in the academic literature. Lavenex (2006) describes the movement of European immigration control “up and out,” from national institutions toward supranational and external forms of governance. Menjívar (2014) similarly argues that contemporary borders increasingly extend beyond territorial lines through the outsourcing of immigration control to transit and origin countries.
The Spanish-Moroccan frontier represents an especially clear example of this process. Ferrer-Gallardo and Gabrielli (2022) describe the 2021 Ceuta episode as demonstrating the “externalities of externalization”: the more Europe relies upon neighbouring gatekeeper states, the more leverage those states acquire. This produces a structural paradox. European states seek to transfer the costs of border management outward, but in doing so they become dependent upon actors over whom they have less direct control. Morocco therefore becomes simultaneously a partner, a gatekeeper and a source of strategic uncertainty.
The literature on Morocco demonstrates that this relationship is not simply imposed upon Rabat. The Moroccan state possesses its own agency. The study of EU-funded migration projects by Boubakri and Mouna (2023) shows that Moroccan authorities have influenced the allocation and implementation of European resources and that externalization is neither a completely coherent European strategy nor a unilateral European imposition. Morocco negotiates, adapts and strategically uses the resources and leverage generated by its position.
This is an important qualification because it prevents the analysis from reproducing the very hierarchy it seeks to criticize. Morocco is not merely Europe’s passive buffer. It is a strategic actor that understands the value of its geographical position. Collyer (2012), examining migration at the Ceuta and Melilla borders, demonstrated that migrants themselves can act strategically within the architecture of European border governance. States, migrants, smugglers, security institutions, local authorities and European agencies all participate in the production of the border.
The result is mutual dependence without complete symmetry. Europe wants Morocco to be sufficiently strong to control migration, sufficiently stable to contain insecurity, sufficiently cooperative to prevent irregular crossings, sufficiently integrated to facilitate trade and sufficiently external to absorb some of the costs of European border management. Such a configuration inevitably generates bargaining power for Rabat. The very success of European externalization therefore contains the possibility of political friction.
The 2026 Ceuta Crisis: What Happened and What Remains Unproven
A serious academic interpretation of the 2026 crisis must distinguish established evidence from political interpretation. The July episode was extraordinary in scale. The European Parliamentary Research Service described approximately 80,000 irregular entrants and initially recorded at least 72 deaths, while the Spanish prime minister later referred to 141 migrant deaths associated with the episode. The crisis involved social-media mobilization, altered perceptions of Spanish migration law, favorable maritime conditions, organized criminal exploitation and weaknesses in border preparedness (EPRS, 2026; Government of Spain, 2026).
The question of Morocco’s role remains particularly sensitive. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez explicitly stated on 3 September that the government had no solid evidence that Moroccan authorities had planned or carried out the mass crossing. He nevertheless acknowledged that the temporary failure of Moroccan border control required investigation and that future cooperation would need additional safeguards. At the same time, Spanish reporting described allegations of Moroccan permissiveness, while the government insisted that investigations should proceed on the basis of verified evidence rather than suspicion. This distinction matters because the political interpretation of the event can move more rapidly than the evidentiary record.
The crisis therefore should not simply be described as a Moroccan attack on Spain. Nor should the existence of Moroccan leverage over migration be denied. Morocco’s geographical position gives it structural influence over movement toward Ceuta, and previous crises have demonstrated that variations in border enforcement can have immediate consequences. But structural leverage is not identical to proven orchestration. Ferrer-Gallardo and Gabrielli’s (2022) analysis of the 2021 crisis is particularly useful here because it demonstrates how border crises can emerge from the interaction between diplomatic tensions, externalization and the structural dependence of European border management upon neighbouring states.
The European response nonetheless had a predictable institutional logic. Spain sought European assistance; the European Parliament called for stronger protection of the external border; and EU institutions reaffirmed cooperation with Morocco. This produced a political sequence that could be perceived in Rabat as asymmetrical: when Ceuta is threatened, Europe rapidly becomes Spanish; when Europe needs Morocco, Morocco is expected to perform a European border-management function. Whether or not this perception accurately captures European intentions, it helps explain Moroccan frustration.
The Politics of Fortress Europe
The notion of “Fortress Europe” has become a central concept in the academic literature on European migration. Collyer and King (2016) emphasize that European migration politics increasingly combines physical border controls, securitization and political narratives of crisis. Andersson (2014) demonstrates how European border controls displace the frontier both outward and inward, producing a dense network of surveillance, waiting, interception and expulsion. These processes are particularly visible in the Spanish enclaves, where the border is simultaneously physical and externalized.
Sahraoui (2024) extends the argument through the concept of the “externalized within.” In Ceuta and Melilla, people who are geographically inside Spanish territory may nonetheless experience exclusionary practices that resemble the external border. This produces an extraordinary legal and social condition in which the boundary between inside and outside becomes blurred. Gross-Wyrtzen and Rachdi El Yacoubi (2022) similarly demonstrate that the Morocco-EU border is not merely a line of territorial separation but a racialized and intimate space in which European ideas of belonging and exclusion are reproduced.
The implications are larger than migration policy. When the border becomes heavily securitized, political relations with neighbouring countries can increasingly be interpreted through the vocabulary of threat. Migration becomes security; security becomes sovereignty; sovereignty becomes territorial integrity; and territorial integrity becomes European solidarity. Once these categories are linked, diplomatic disagreements can rapidly escalate into security crises.
Morocco’s frustration can therefore be understood partly as a response to the transformation of a bilateral relationship into a security architecture in which European institutions possess greater institutional weight. Rabat may accept cooperation on migration because cooperation serves Moroccan interests as well as European ones, but it may resist the implicit hierarchy that emerges when cooperation is framed as an obligation rather than a negotiated partnership.
The Historical “Moro” and the Civilizationalization of Border Politics
The use of civilizational language in relation to Ceuta is particularly dangerous. The category of the “Moro” has a long history in Iberian representations of North African Muslims. Velasco de Castro (2014) demonstrates how the term was incorporated into Francoist colonial discourse, while Marín (2009) reveals the relationship between Spanish Orientalism and colonial action. Bolorinos Allard (2017) adds another dimension by showing how Spanish colonial photography represented Morocco through a complex combination of cultural admiration, medievalist nostalgia and colonial hierarchy.
These historical representations do not prove that contemporary Spanish society is characterized by hostility toward Moroccans. Such a claim would be both empirically excessive and analytically weak. Spain contains a large Moroccan community, extensive social and economic relations with Morocco, and numerous cultural and political actors committed to cooperation. The more precise point is that political crises can reactivate inherited symbolic repertoires. When migration is described as an “invasion,” migrants can be transformed discursively from individuals into an undifferentiated collective threat.
This is particularly problematic because Morocco has increasingly constructed an alternative diplomatic identity around convivencia, religious pluralism, Jewish heritage and interfaith dialogue. The kingdom presents itself as simultaneously African, Mediterranean, Arab, Islamic, Amazigh and connected to a deep Jewish history. Chtatou (2023) has emphasized the importance of Moroccan-Jewish history in understanding the country’s contemporary relationship with Israel, while the broader Moroccan diplomatic discourse increasingly presents historical coexistence as a strategic asset.
Ceuta therefore produces a paradox. Morocco seeks to present the Mediterranean as a space of historical interconnection, while the border can reproduce a binary geography of Europe versus Africa. Spain and Morocco are geographically too close for such a binary to be sustainable, yet the institutional architecture of the border repeatedly reconstructs it.
Europe as Partner and Power
The European Union’s response to Ceuta demonstrates the coexistence of two apparently contradictory realities: European dependence upon Morocco and European solidarity with Spain. There is no contradiction at the institutional level. Spain is an EU member state, and Ceuta is treated as part of the Union’s external frontier. It is therefore predictable that European institutions would support Spain during a major border crisis.
Yet from Morocco’s perspective, the Europeanization of Ceuta changes the political equation. What Rabat sees as a bilateral historical question becomes embedded within a European system whose collective economic and political power is vastly greater than Morocco’s. This is why European solidarity can be experienced in Morocco not simply as Spanish support but as an expression of structural hierarchy.
The solution cannot be to demand that Europe cease supporting Spain. Such a demand would contradict the institutional logic of European integration. The more productive objective would be to ensure that European solidarity with Spain does not prevent Europe from recognizing Morocco as a strategic partner with legitimate interests of its own. The EU’s relationship with Morocco should not be reduced to migration control.
Faustini Torres (2025) provides an important critical perspective here, arguing that EU migration externalization can prioritize migration control over other normative objectives and can reinforce power asymmetries within Morocco. Her argument reinforces the broader proposition that externalization is not politically neutral. It creates institutional dependencies, redistributes authority and can affect domestic political structures.
If Morocco is treated primarily as Europe’s southern border guard, the relationship will remain transactional. If it is treated as a strategic Mediterranean and African power whose cooperation is negotiated rather than presumed, the relationship can become genuinely multidimensional.
Washington as the Atlantic Counterweight
Morocco’s relationship with the United States provides an important source of strategic diversification. The relationship is unusually old. Morocco recognized the United States in 1777, and the two countries formalized relations through the 1786 Treaty of Peace and Friendship. Over the decades, the relationship acquired strategic depth, particularly during the Cold War and after the attacks of 11 September 2001. Morocco joined NATO’s Mediterranean Dialogue in 1995 and was designated a Major Non-NATO Ally by the United States in 2004. American official documents describe Morocco as a vital partner in regional security, counterterrorism, trade and investment (U.S. Department of State, 2024).
This relationship gives Rabat something that Europe cannot provide in exactly the same manner: an Atlantic strategic partnership located outside the institutional hierarchy of the European Union. Washington is not a substitute for Europe. The EU remains overwhelmingly more important to Morocco in terms of geographical proximity and economic integration. But the United States can provide strategic balancing.
The distinction between economic centrality and strategic diversification is essential. A country may depend heavily upon one economic market while deliberately diversifying its defence and diplomatic relationships. Morocco’s contemporary foreign policy increasingly resembles such a model. Europe supplies proximity, markets, investment and regulatory integration; the United States provides an Atlantic security relationship; Israel contributes technological and defence cooperation; Africa supplies continental depth; the Gulf offers financial and political partnerships; and China increasingly provides another economic and infrastructural option.
This is not an anti-European strategy. It is a multi-vector strategy.
Morocco-Israel: From Liaison to Strategic Partnership
The Israeli dimension has become particularly significant because the relationship rests upon both historical and contemporary foundations. Morocco has one of the deepest Jewish histories in the Muslim world, and Moroccan Jewish communities developed extensive cultural, commercial and familial connections across the Mediterranean. The political relationship with Israel existed informally for decades before the establishment of liaison offices in the 1990s. Those offices were closed in 2000, but diplomatic relations were restored in 2020 within the framework of the Abraham Accords.
My own analysis of the Moroccan-Israeli relationship has argued that normalization did not create a relationship from nothing; it reactivated historical, social and cultural connections that had survived the diplomatic rupture (Chtatou, 2023). The contemporary relationship has since moved well beyond symbolic normalization. Cooperation has expanded into defence, intelligence, technology, agriculture, water, investment, tourism and innovation. Traub, Cohen and Kertcher (2025) argue that Morocco’s strengthening relationship with Israel should be understood not only through realism and security competition but also through a neoliberal logic of knowledge-based economic cooperation. This is an important addition to the strategic interpretation because it shows that the relationship cannot be reduced to Western Sahara or military considerations.
The September 2026 agreement to upgrade diplomatic relations to full embassies and exchange ambassadors marks another institutional transformation. Liaison offices suggested limited or exploratory diplomatic engagement; full embassies signify a more durable political relationship. Reuters reported the agreement on 16 September 2026, describing it as a further deepening of the normalization process that began in 2020 (Reuters, 2026).
The emerging trilateral U.S.-Morocco-Israel relationship is therefore strategically significant. It is not a formal military alliance and should not be represented as a substitute for NATO, the European Union or Morocco’s African and Arab partnerships. It is better understood as a network of complementary relationships. Washington contributes Atlantic strategic depth; Israel contributes technology, defence expertise and innovation; Morocco contributes geographical access, political relationships in Africa and the Arab world, and a distinctive diplomatic bridge between different regional systems.
The importance of the relationship lies precisely in its redundancy. A middle power with multiple strategic partners possesses more room for manoeuvre than a state whose external relationships are concentrated within one geopolitical structure.
Western Sahara and the Diplomacy of Recognition
Western Sahara is indispensable to understanding Moroccan strategic diversification. For Rabat, the issue is inseparable from territorial integrity and national identity. The American recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara in 2020 represented a major diplomatic development, while Israel subsequently recognized Morocco’s position in 2023. The international legal and political debate surrounding Western Sahara remains contested, and the positions of Morocco, the Polisario Front, Algeria, the United Nations and different states cannot be reduced to a single narrative. Simon (2014) emphasizes the continuing importance of self-determination, autonomy and decolonization within the legal debate.
The important point for the present essay is not to adjudicate that dispute but to understand its effect upon Moroccan strategy. Recognition has become a central diplomatic objective for Rabat. Larémont (2026) argues that Morocco has increasingly converted sovereignty into a form of diplomatic entrepreneurship by linking migration, security, investment, religious diplomacy and economic cooperation to broader recognition-building. This helps explain why partnerships with Washington and Jerusalem have such importance for Morocco.
The European position has historically been more legally cautious and institutionally differentiated. The contrast between European caution and American and Israeli recognition has therefore created a strategic asymmetry in Morocco’s external relations. Rabat values European economic relations but simultaneously seeks diplomatic partners willing to support its sovereignty position more explicitly.
Ceuta intersects with this broader pattern because both questions concern territorial sovereignty and the degree to which European actors are perceived by Morocco as recognizing Moroccan strategic interests. If European institutions appear automatically aligned with Spain on Ceuta while maintaining greater caution on Western Sahara, Rabat has additional incentives to cultivate partnerships outside Europe.
Morocco’s Strategic Pluralism
Morocco’s foreign policy under Mohammed VI cannot adequately be described as a simple choice between Europe and the United States, or between the West and the Arab world. Korany and Dessouki (2010) emphasize the close relationship between Morocco’s foreign policy, territorial integrity and domestic political stability. Bejjit (2016) similarly emphasizes the distinctive evolution of Moroccan foreign policy under Mohammed VI. More recent scholarship has highlighted the kingdom’s activist African policy, which combines religious diplomacy, commercial engagement and continental institution-building (Strategic Comments, 2018).
The African dimension is especially important because it demonstrates that Moroccan strategic diversification is not simply Atlantic or Middle Eastern. Morocco returned to the African Union in 2017 and has subsequently expanded its diplomatic and economic presence across the continent. Its Africa policy has created another layer of strategic depth. Morocco can therefore approach Europe not simply as a southern neighbour seeking European favour but increasingly as an African state with its own continental networks.
This multidimensional identity is central to Morocco’s contemporary strategic culture. It is simultaneously African, Mediterranean, Atlantic, Arab, Muslim, Amazigh, connected to Europe and increasingly linked to Israel and the United States. The strategic objective is not to choose one identity over another but to convert their coexistence into diplomatic leverage.
This is why “strategic pluralism” is a more accurate concept than “alignment.” Morocco is not necessarily seeking a bloc. It is seeking options.
The Strategic Lesson of Ceuta
The principal lesson Morocco may draw from Ceuta is therefore not that Europe is an enemy but that dependence creates vulnerability. The relationship with Europe is too deep to abandon and too geographically fundamental to replace. Millions of Moroccans live in Europe; European markets remain central to Moroccan trade; Spain is a neighbouring state with which Morocco shares extensive economic, security and social relations; and the EU remains a critical source of investment, technology and regulatory integration.
But strategic dependence differs from strategic partnership. A genuinely strategic partnership presupposes that both sides possess meaningful alternatives. Morocco’s expanding relations with Washington and Jerusalem, its African diplomacy, its Gulf partnerships and its growing relations with Asian powers all contribute to such alternatives.
The objective is not to prevent Europe from possessing influence over Morocco. That would be impossible. The objective is to ensure that European influence is balanced by Moroccan agency.
This is characteristic of middle-power diplomacy in an increasingly fragmented international system. Morocco is too small to impose its preferences upon major powers but too strategically located to be ignored. Its bargaining power derives from geography, political stability, migration cooperation, counterterrorism, African diplomacy, Atlantic access and its role in Western Sahara.
Ceuta makes these dynamics visible because the enclave is precisely where European dependence upon Moroccan cooperation meets Spanish sovereignty.
Ceuta and the Future of Spain-Morocco Relations
Strategic diversification should not be confused with strategic rupture. Spain remains indispensable to Morocco. The two countries share geography that cannot be negotiated away. Their economies are deeply connected; their security services cooperate against terrorism and organized crime; their migration systems are interdependent; their societies are connected through large diasporic communities; and their future cooperation will include major international events such as the 2030 FIFA World Cup.
The challenge is therefore to prevent Ceuta from becoming the permanent organizing principle of bilateral relations. The 1991 treaty provides a conceptual foundation for doing so. Its commitments to equality, peaceful dispute settlement, cultural dialogue, economic cooperation, defence cooperation and mutual understanding remain highly relevant (Government of Spain, 1991).
What is needed is a political architecture capable of addressing the structural contradiction represented by Ceuta without requiring either side to abandon its legal position. Such an architecture could include a permanent dialogue mechanism concerning Ceuta and Melilla; bilateral crisis-prevention arrangements for extraordinary migration movements; joint investigation mechanisms concerning disinformation and organized criminal activity; enhanced economic integration around the Strait of Gibraltar; humanitarian coordination during border emergencies; expanded academic and cultural dialogue; and a stronger convivencia agenda involving universities, municipalities, civil society and cultural institutions.
The objective should not be to solve the sovereignty dispute through informal means. It should be to prevent the dispute from contaminating every other dimension of the relationship.
From Fortress Europe to Mediterranean Convivencia
The alternative to the politics of Ceuta is not necessarily open borders. It is shared security without civilizational separation. Europe possesses legitimate interests in controlling its external borders; Spain possesses legitimate interests in defending territories it considers sovereign; Morocco possesses legitimate interests in territorial integrity, political autonomy and national dignity; migrants possess rights under international law. These realities can coexist if security does not become the only language through which the relationship is understood.
The danger arises when one dimension becomes absolute. When security dominates everything, Morocco becomes a buffer. When sovereignty dominates everything, cooperation becomes impossible. When migration dominates everything, human beings become statistics. When historical memory dominates everything, contemporary partnership becomes hostage to the past. When European solidarity dominates everything, Moroccan strategic interests become invisible.
The objective should instead be a postcolonial Mediterranean compact in which historical differences are acknowledged without being transformed into permanent antagonism. My own recent work on Ceuta has argued that the city could be reconceptualized as a laboratory for Spanish-Moroccan-European cooperation rather than exclusively as a fortress (Chtatou, 2026a, 2026b). Such an approach would not require Morocco to recognize Spanish sovereignty or Spain to abandon its position. It would simply recognize that geographical proximity makes permanent separation impossible.
Ceuta is too close to Morocco to be isolated from Morocco. Morocco is too close to Europe to be detached from Europe. Spain is too deeply embedded in the European Union to separate Ceuta from European politics. The three realities form a single geopolitical system.
The Danger of Turning the Moro into the Permanent Other
The cultural lesson of the Ceuta crisis concerns language as much as territory. The category of the “Moro” belongs to a long history of European representations of North African Muslims, and scholarship demonstrates that these representations could alternate between fascination, romanticization, paternalism and dehumanization. The challenge is therefore to prevent contemporary security discourse from reproducing inherited civilizational binaries.
This is especially important because Morocco itself has increasingly invested in a diplomatic discourse of convivencia. Its reconstruction of Jewish heritage, its promotion of interfaith dialogue and its engagement with Israel all contribute to an image of Morocco as a bridge between Africa, Europe and the Middle East. Chtatou (2023) emphasizes the importance of Moroccan Jewish history in understanding the contemporary Moroccan-Israeli relationship, while broader Moroccan diplomacy has increasingly used religious moderation and historical coexistence as sources of international soft power.
The paradox is striking: at the very moment when Morocco presents itself as a plural Mediterranean and African civilization, Ceuta can reproduce an older binary of Europe versus Morocco. The challenge for Spain is therefore not simply to secure the enclave but to ensure that border security does not inadvertently reproduce the civilizational divisions that contemporary Spanish-Moroccan diplomacy otherwise seeks to overcome.
America and Israel as Strategic Multipliers
It would be mistaken to interpret Morocco’s strengthening relationships with America and Israel as evidence that Rabat intends to abandon Europe. Geography makes such a rupture impossible. European markets remain central; Spain remains an indispensable neighbour; EU institutions provide economic and regulatory frameworks that Washington and Jerusalem cannot reproduce; and Moroccan African diplomacy benefits from European connectivity.
The emerging American-Israeli relationship should consequently be conceptualized as a strategic multiplier rather than a substitute. America provides Atlantic depth; Israel provides technological and strategic capabilities; Europe provides economic and geographical depth; Africa provides continental depth; the Arab world provides cultural and political networks; and Morocco’s monarchy provides the institutional framework within which these relationships can be coordinated.
The result is a foreign policy that increasingly resembles hedging rather than alignment. Morocco seeks sufficient engagement with each major partner to prevent strategic isolation while avoiding excessive dependence upon any one of them. This is particularly important in an international environment characterized by geopolitical fragmentation, great-power competition and the declining ability of any single actor to dominate the Mediterranean.
The Larger Mediterranean Transformation
Ceuta is ultimately a symptom of a broader transformation. The Mediterranean can no longer adequately be described through the old European-centered model in which Europe constituted the political core and North Africa its southern periphery. Morocco increasingly challenges that hierarchy through its economic growth, African diplomacy, security cooperation, religious diplomacy and diversified international partnerships.
The kingdom is simultaneously an African power, an Atlantic state, a Mediterranean country, an Arab-Muslim monarchy, a state with a profound Jewish historical heritage, a Western security partner, a U.S. Major Non-NATO Ally and a strategic partner of Israel. These identities are not mutually exclusive. They constitute the basis of Morocco’s contemporary strategic pluralism.
This transformation has consequences for Europe. The European Union must decide whether Morocco will continue to be treated primarily as a southern buffer responsible for managing migration or as a strategic Mediterranean power whose cooperation should be built upon reciprocity. The first model is based on externalization; the second on partnership.
The distinction is fundamental. Externalization assumes that Europe can move the costs of its border regime outward. Partnership recognizes that the actor receiving those responsibilities acquires political leverage. The more Europe depends upon Morocco for migration control, counterterrorism and regional stability, the more important it becomes to maintain a relationship based upon mutual respect rather than unilateral expectation.
Conclusion: From Confrontation to Strategic Equilibrium
The 2026 Ceuta crisis should not be reduced to a simple narrative of Spanish aggression, Moroccan retaliation or European hostility. The evidence is more complicated. The mass movement was extraordinary and tragic, but the Spanish government stated that it had no solid evidence that Morocco had planned or carried out the event, while acknowledging that Moroccan permissiveness during a crucial period required investigation. European institutions simultaneously reaffirmed solidarity with Spain and the importance of cooperation with Morocco (Government of Spain, 2026; EPRS, 2026). The correct academic interpretation must therefore distinguish between proven governmental responsibility, structural Moroccan leverage and the political perceptions generated by the crisis.
Nevertheless, the episode revealed a profound geopolitical reality: Ceuta remains a fault line because geography, sovereignty, colonial memory, European integration and migration policy intersect there. Spain’s response was shaped by its understanding of territorial sovereignty and EU border security. European institutions responded through solidarity with Spain and support for stronger external-border protection. Morocco, meanwhile, confronted the uncomfortable reality that its principal European partner could simultaneously depend upon Moroccan cooperation and institutionalize a border regime around a territory whose status remains contested in Moroccan political consciousness.
The resulting contradiction is precisely what Moroccan strategic diversification seeks to manage. Rabat cannot afford to abandon Europe, but neither does it wish to depend exclusively upon Europe. The United States provides a long-standing Atlantic security relationship reinforced by Major Non-NATO Ally status and defence cooperation. Israel provides an increasingly sophisticated relationship encompassing technology, defence, investment and historical-cultural connectivity. The September 2026 decision to establish full embassies represents another step in the institutionalization of this partnership (Reuters, 2026). Morocco’s African diplomacy provides further continental depth, while its relations with Gulf and Asian powers create additional options.
The strategic significance of this diversification should not be exaggerated into the creation of a formal anti-European bloc. There is no evidence of such a structure. What Morocco is acquiring is something subtler and potentially more consequential: strategic choice. Ceuta has demonstrated the limits of a relationship based solely upon geographical proximity and European institutional power. Washington provides an Atlantic counterweight; Jerusalem provides technological and strategic capabilities; Africa provides continental depth; and Europe remains the indispensable economic and geographical partner.
The lesson for Morocco is therefore not to turn away from Europe but to negotiate with Europe from a position of greater diversification. The lesson for Spain is that Morocco cannot simultaneously be treated as a sovereign strategic partner and as an externalized security buffer expected to absorb the costs of Europe’s migration regime without acquiring corresponding political leverage. The lesson for Europe is perhaps the most important: Morocco is not merely Europe’s southern periphery but one of the principal strategic actors of the Western Mediterranean.
The old geography in which Europe looked southward and Morocco looked northward is disappearing. The Strait of Gibraltar is increasingly less a frontier separating two geopolitical worlds than a zone where those worlds overlap. Ceuta can therefore become either a permanent fortress or a laboratory of a new Mediterranean order. The first path would perpetuate historical suspicion, securitization and strategic asymmetry. The second would require Spain, Morocco and the European Union to recognize that they are not simply neighbours but structurally interdependent political communities whose security, prosperity and historical futures are already intertwined.
Morocco’s turn toward America and Israel should consequently be understood neither as an anti-European revolt nor as a geopolitical betrayal. It is better understood as the emergence of a more sophisticated doctrine of strategic pluralism. Europe remains indispensable; America provides Atlantic depth; Israel has become strategically significant; Africa has become increasingly central; and Morocco’s sovereignty remains the organizing principle connecting these multiple relationships.
The future of the Western Mediterranean will therefore depend less upon which side possesses the stronger fence than upon whether the actors around that fence can construct a political relationship in which sovereignty does not eliminate interdependence, security does not erase dignity, history does not imprison the present, and proximity becomes a resource for convivencia rather than a permanent source of confrontation.
In that sense, the ultimate question raised by Ceuta is not whether Morocco will choose Europe, America or Israel. It is whether Morocco can construct a foreign policy in which it no longer has to choose.
Additional scholarly references incorporated
The revised version draws on a substantially broader scholarly base, including Peter Gold on the enclaves and their migration function; Juan B. Vilar on the historical construction of the Ceuta border; Ferrer-Gallardo and Kramsch on geopolitical, functional and symbolic rebordering; Ferrer-Gallardo and Gabrielli on the externalities of EU border externalization; Lavenex on the externalization of European immigration control; Andersson on European border securitization; Collyer on migration and strategic agency; Sahraoui on the “externalized within”; Boeyink, Sahraoui and Tyszler on coloniality and mobility control; Mateo Dieste on Spanish colonial memory; Iglesias-Amorín and Velasco-de-Castro on conflicting memories of the Rif War; Marín and Velasco de Castro on Spanish Orientalism and the construction of the “Moro”; and Larémont on Morocco’s contemporary “sovereignty entrepreneurship.” These additions give the argument a much firmer academic foundation than the previous version. (OUP Academic)
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