“Streets of Solidarity”: The Palestinianization of Morocco’s Public Spaces

The “mellah” is a quintessential Moroccan Jewish space. Although not every Moroccan city had one, the mellah is associated with Jews and has become a signifier rather than a symbol of Jewish community in Morocco. This both constricted and fluid space represents a unique cultural and historical site, where some of the more than 270,000 Jews lived across Morocco’s rural and urban regions before their mass emigration in the 1950s and 1960s. As thousands of Jews left Morocco to Palestine/Israel, Europe, and the Americas, the number of Jewish residents in Morocco has been drastically reduced to a mere 3,000 people today. Despite the reduced Jewish presence, the mellah remains a significant cultural landmark in both urban and rural Moroccan landscapes, with its history preserved through the memories of Moroccans, Muslim and Jewish alike, in Morocco and in the diaspora. Nonetheless, the mellah has undergone major architectural and planning transformations, including changes in street naming and toponymic commemoration. In this essay, we explore the commemorative street naming in the new mellah (Hay Riad) of the imperial city of Meknes (see Fig. 1) and we contend that the post-independence renaming of streets and alleys in the new mellah of Meknes, and other national urban geographies, reflects a form of local and national solidarity with the Palestinian struggle especially in the aftermath of the 1967 War and Palestinian Naksa (setback).

*Figure 1 Map of Meknes with old and new mellah (Toledano, 1982).*

Meknes’s new mellah (Hay Riad) went through three stages of street name changes from its establishment in 1924 under the French Protectorate (1912-1956) to the officialization and publicization of Morocco and Israel’s ongoing cooperation in December 2020. The new mellah in Meknes experienced what Maoz Azaryahu terms “toponymic cleansing” when the Socialist-led city council gave Arab-Islamic and Palestinian names to the streets of the mellah between the late 1970s and 1980s, primarily in response to Israeli authorities’ urban policies in Jerusalem starting in 1967 (Azaryahu, 2011). It is important to note that in the case of Meknes’ new mellah many original names remain in place, covered by new plates that obscure the old ones. In fact, you can uncover the original name by removing the current plate (FIG. 3). The erasure of the Moroccan Quarter, in addition to the political and social repercussions of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and of the First Intifada in 1987 also played a key role in these street naming changes. As Azaryahu suggests in his other work on Israel/Palestine and Germany, the act of street renaming can be seen as “a measure of symbolic retribution.” This is similar to the case in Cairo, where after the 2000 Intifada, following Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount on September 28^th, the Giza municipality named the street housing the Israeli Embassy after the widely circulated photograph of Mohammed Al-Durrah, a Palestinian child killed by Israeli forces in an alley in Gaza while his father was trying to shelter him. This name change led to public protest by the government of Israel (Ash-sharq al-Awsat, 2000). In his analysis of Mohamed Ezzeddine Tazi’s novel, Ana al-mansi, which takes places in the mellah of Fez, Morocco, El Guabli discusses similar phenomenon and notes that by “tracing changes to policies and reconstructing the circumstances in which a place was renamed or a street erased from the cartography of a city, we are not only able to able to learn about place, but also to understand the broader dynamics in which transformations in the place take place” (El Guabli, 2023: 73). Thus, by replacing Jewish names of a formerly Jewish space in Morocco, the municipality’s actions could be interpreted as an association of Moroccan Jews with Zionism and Israel in addition to symbolically enmeshing Morocco and Palestine as extensions for each other.

*Figure 2 A Replica of the Dome of the Rock displayed at Bab Bou Ameir, Meknes.*

Aside from relying on word of mouth or GPS, Moroccan people often use landmarks for guidance instead of street names. This means street names generally go unnoticed. Yet, after independence, the Moroccan government purged many cities of French names and replaced them with Arabic and national designations (Hassa, 2016). Amazigh names of topographic and inhabited spaces were also purged and replaced by Arabized names (El Guabli, 2020). The state and local urban authorities deployed a set of strategies to erase colonial era names in some cases, while leaving some names as is, in other instances. In his ethnographic encounter with Muslim informants who reside in the mellah of Meknes after Jews left en masse, Moroccan scholar Ahmed Chouari cites informant Rachid’s interpretation of the city council’s removal of Jewish names as “an explicit intention” to erase Jewish identity from the new mellah (Chouari, 2021; Semi and Hatimi, 2011).

Like many other Moroccan cities, Meknes did not have a separate quarter for Jews before the Sultan Moulay Ismail moved his capital from Marrakesh to Meknes. In fact, Jews lived alongside Muslims in the same neighborhoods, but they were encouraged, with the advent of Ismail’s rule, to relocate to a neighborhood (see Fig. 1), which became the site of the original mellah (old mellah) between 1679 and 1682 (Assaraf, 2009; Lahya, 2016; Toledano, 1982). As more Jews from the Tafilalet region and other neighboring and southern communities settled in the Jewish quarter, its population grew over the years. Since the mellah witnessed the growth of artisanal activities, Sephardic newcomers and indigenous southern Jewish families settled in separate streets many of which bore their names (Derb Rabbi El Hacham, Derb Rebbi Elisha, Derb Rebbi Shalom Lazimi) or the names of their artisanal guilds (Derb El Attarin, Derb Gzarine, Derb Edkakine). The limited physical space could not accommodate the growth of the population, and overcrowding became a pressing issue, which pushed the French Protectorate and leaders of the Jewish community to plan new settlements to resolve the issues that ensued from overpopulation and accommodate the Protectorate’s plans to make Meknes the Versailles of Morocco. In 1924, work began on the new mellah on a hilly site that overlooks the old mellah. By 1926, Jewish families such as Toledano, El Krief, Berdugo, and others moved to the new Jewish quarter. In the post-independence period and within the context of Moroccans’ support for the Palestinian cause against Israeli occupation, both the old and the new mellahs were renamed Hay El Fath (the Fatḥ Neighborhood) and Hay Riad (the Gardens Neighborhood), respectively.

To further signal its stated policy in support of Palestinians, the city council of Meknes signed a sister city agreement with East Jerusalem through the PLO representative in Rabat in January 1990. Although toothless, the partnership officialized the municipality’s commitment to the Palestinian question, which started a decade earlier. This was just one of many actions that the city council undertook, including the display in 1980 of a replica of the Dome of the Rock. Made by carpenters and traditional craftsmen from Meknes, this replica was displayed in Bou Ameir public square until 1985 (see Fig. 2). By the early 1990s, this renaming policy yielded an intriguing and variegated toponymic landscape. While most of the streets of the new mellah carried Arab-Islamic names, the changes did not affect the old mellah as much.

*Figure 3 Uncovered original sign for Ecoles Israelites Street which became El Maaarif street in the 1980s. Credit: Aomar Boum.*

*Figure 4 Street Hittene (Tribual Rabbinique). Credit: Abdessamad Fatmi.*

*Figure 5 Sinai (Talmud Torah) Street. Credit: Abdessamad Fatmi.*

The new mellah is no different. Cohen and Hamari have recorded that al-Khalil (otherwise known as Hebron), Ammar Ben Yasser (the Prophet Mohammed’s companion), Hittine (reference to Saladin victorious battle against the Christians in 1187), Hasan al-Ansari (the Prophet Mohammed's companion), Ibn Zaydun (an Andalusian poet from Cordoba), al-Quds, Palestine, Rhaza (Gaza), and Jordan (al-Urdun) have replaced the original Moroccan Jewish names for streets (Cohen and Harami, 2018). A street was named after Mahmoud al-Hamchari, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) representative in France who was assassinated by Israel in 1973 after the killing of Israeli Olympic team members by the Black September Organization in Munich in September 1972. Another street bore the name of Shahid Abderrahmane Amazghar, a Moroccan who joined the ranks of the Palestinian group known as the Arab Liberation Front and was killed by Israel during a military operation in 1975.

In December 2020, Saad Eddine El Othmani, former General Secretary of the Justice and Development Party and Prime Minister, signed a controversial Israeli-Moroccan normalization agreement in the presence of King Mohamed VI, the U.S. Presidential Advisor Jared Kushner, and the Israeli National Security Council Head Meir Ben-Shabbat. This agreement encouraged a state-driven cultural revitalization of Jewish spaces, involving many state and private cultural and political players. The agreement also officialized the military and economic cooperation with Israel, which many consider an open secret. The state did not take into account the strong and vocal Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement in the country whose weekly demonstrations in front of the Parliament in Rabat and in other cities nationwide drew significant crowds. Moroccans have a long history of supporting Palestinians, and their response to the agreement measured up to the degree of the support. Nevertheless, the Moroccan state disregarded the contestation and moved forward with the normalization.

This street naming and renaming poses serious challenges in terms of rightly standing with Palestinians and commemorating their struggle for decolonization and in the meantime safeguarding Morocco’s Jewish sites and the memory of Jews as Moroccans before being Israelis. Economic considerations have also imposed a new change of strategy on the new city councils. The growing religious tourism within Meknes pushed the authorities to bring back some of these Moroccan Jewish names. Names like Rue Rabbi Haim Messas (Hassan El Ansari), Rue des Ecoles Israelites (El Maarif), Rue de Tribunal Rabbinique (Hettine), Rue Rabbi Raphael Berdugo (Al-Urdun), Rue Rabbi Daoud (Moutanabbi), and Rue Talmud Torah (Sinai) have been restored (FIG. 4; FIG 5), and in May 2022, a large delegation of about five hundred Jews, most of whom claim descent from Meknes, returned to witness the inauguration of the newly rehabilitated Jewish cemetery just a few steps from the original mellah street that was rebaptized Palestine forty years ago. These changes highlight a tricky approach to connect the recently restored cemeteries to the homes of revered rabbis within the mellah, the site of the Rabbinical Court, synagogues, and the Alliance School. Serge Berdugo, the head of the Jewish community of Morocco expressed his joy to celebrate the first Hiloula at the renovated cemetery of the hometown of his ancestor more than sixty years after the last one (Al-Kuwaiti, 2022). A conference on the history of the Jewish community of Meknes, an exhibition of photos of rabbinical leaders of Meknes, and tours of Jewish sites such as the Alliance Israelite Universelle school were also included in the program.

This rehabilitation of Jewish heritage in the new mellah of Meknes was part of a nation-wide movement that ensued from restitution of the street names of the mellah of Marrakesh. Unlike the case of the mellah of Meknes, where street renaming went unchallenged by other parties between the 1970s and 1980s, the attempt by the city council to change the names of streets in the mellah of Marrakesh was met with strong opposition from members of the Jewish community, requiring the intervention of King Mohammed VI in January 2017. Built in the middle of the sixteenth century (Gottreich, 2007), the original name of the mellah of Marrakesh was reinstated after decades of being called Essalam (Peace in Arabic) following the post-independence era and Jewish immigration. It should be noted that even though the mellah name was changed to Essalam, local people continued to refer to it as the mellah. After a local uproar caused by the naming of streets and squares in cities led by members of the Justice and Development Party, led by Saad Eddine El Othmani, with names that have no Moroccan resonances, particularly amidst Amazigh activists’ advocacy for indigenous names, the Ministry of the Interior intervened decisively to stop the process. The result is that the reinstatement or restitution of Jewish names is part of a larger process that reflects Moroccans’ awareness of their own cultural specificity.

Unlike the many actors who critiqued street name changes in the mellah of Marrakesh, Abdessamad Belkebir, a former leader of the Union Nationale des Etudiants Marocains (UNEM) and a prominent figure in the Moroccan Association for the Support of the Palestinian Struggle and the National Action Group for Palestine, had a different take. He advocated for the removal of the mellah’s decaying buildings and their replacement with new apartment complexes to provide a “decent livelihood for the population” (Belkebir, 2017). As though maintaining the name of the mellah and improving the squalid living conditions of its Muslim inhabitants were mutually exclusive, Belkebir, who has a reputation of making controversial statements, argued that preserving Jewish memory should not come at the expense of the human dignity of the current dwellers of the mellah.

In Belkebir’s eyes, the mellah of Marrakesh, like others of its kind, reproduces overcrowding in multi-family housing, misery, drug use, and crime to the extent that security cannot enter it at night, perpetuating social stigma. However, this is nothing new. Visitors to Jewish mellah in Marrakesh in both precolonial and colonial periods commented on the squalor and poverty of the premises. Belkebir seizes this opportunity to make a suggestion that would end the Jewish identity of the mellah once for all—that is a regional and national project for the gradual demolition and reconstruction of the mellah into modern and humane buildings that provide each family with a private residence, document their ownership, and respect their values and human rights. He notes, with a tone of witty sarcasm, that only then can we name each building after a respected Jewish figure (Einstein) or our common ancestor (Abraham) or great prophets like Moses, Aaron, Solomon, and David if our society is genuinely concerned with cultural rights rather than commercial interests.

After the Marrakesh case, another debate emerged in the coastal city of Agadir, the capital of Souss and home of Amazigh identity and a twin city of Gaza City. In July 2018, under the control of the Islamist Party of Justice and Development, the municipality of Agadir unanimously approved giving Palestinian names to more than forty streets of a newly established neighborhood baptized al-Quds (Al-Quwiti, 2018). While the majority of residents welcomed the project, some Amazigh activists saw it as a decision that undermined the indigenous identity of their region. Despite the general popular support of Palestine among Amazigh communities, politicized Amazigh activists called out for detachment from the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Understood within its general context of Amazigh struggle for recognition, these Amazigh activists perceived these measures as a disempowerment of Imazighen whose identity and culture were marginalized in order to highlight Palestinian cities. Therefore, they see Palestinian street naming as a form of “Amazighophobia sponsored by pan-Arab, pan-Islamic, and Nasserist forces against Amazigh communities” (Boum, 2013). It is in this context that intellectual leaders of this movement, such as Ahmed Daghrani, publicly expressed their political disengagement from the Palestinian cause, which they saw as an “Arab cause” that does not reflect the cultural, economic, and political aspirations of their communities.

*Figure 6 Street Palestine (Rue Mellah) Street. Credit: Aomar Boum.*

In 2016, amidst the controversy over the renaming of the mellah in Marrakesh, a historic house in the old city of Jerusalem was officially inaugurated as Bayt al-Maghrib following eight years of restoration under the official patronage of King Mohammed VI. Spanning 3,000 square meters across three floors and located just a few meters from the al-Aqsa Mosque, the house was acquired from a Jerusalem family after Palestinian leader Faisal Husseini requested King Hassan II in 1998 acquire it before Israeli authorities could take possession. King Hassan II purchased the house for five million dollars and invested an additional three million dollars in its restoration. Sponsored by the al-Quds Committee and funded by Bayt Mal al-Quds, the house now functions as a cultural center, providing social, cultural, economic, and medical services to Palestinians in East Jerusalem. It coordinates summer camps for Palestinian children from East Jerusalem in Morocco. In the complex landscape of street name changes and cultural reclamation, this Palestinian/Moroccan house in East Jerusalem, situated near the Maghrib Quarter, where many Palestinians of Moroccan descent once lived, represents a form of “restorative justice,” as a resident of the new mellah of Meknes and sympathizer of the Party of Justice and Development told me when we recounted to him the story of the Jerusalemite house that bears the name of Bayt al-Maghrib. He then proceeded to wonder what members of the Meknes city council, who advocated for such restorative measures in the 1980s by layering Jewish names with Palestinian labels, would say today about the new national moment in between Palestinian solidarity and growing relationships between Israelis and Israel in Morocco.

Acknowledgments:

Special thanks to Abdessamad Fatmi and his mother, who relocated to the new mellah in the 1960s, when Muslim families began to settle and sometimes live alongside Jewish families. We would also like to acknowledge two informants from the new mellah who wish to remain anonymous but graciously participated in interviews for this project. We are deeply grateful to Brahim El Guabli and Daniel Schroeter for their insightful comments and suggestions, which greatly enhanced the final version of this article. Any remaining mistakes are our own.

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