Are US and Israel benefitting from 'migration blackmail' in Spain?

Analysts accuse Morocco of unleashing undocumented migrants into Ceuta. Many note how Tel Aviv and Washington are seizing the moment with particular zeal.

Sarah Leah Whitson

Aug 05, 2026

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/morocco-spain-migrants-israel/

Questions continue to swirl around the flash flood of nearly 60,000 migrants who swam or walked from Morocco into Ceuta, a tiny Spanish enclave on the tip of Africa last week.

How did so many migrants manage to breach Moroccan border security forces, who appear to have largely disappeared from their stations? Why had so many migrants received social media messages encouraging them to swarm the enclave?

Analysts pointed their fingers at the Moroccan government, arguing it was once again deploying “migration blackmail,” as the practice has been dubbed, to punish its European neighbors and bend them to its will. But this time, Israel and the United States appear to be the principal beneficiaries. Indeed, they have seized on the politically embarrassing episode to weaken a Spanish government they view as one of their principal European antagonists.

This was not the first time Ceuta’s border had been breached, nor the first time that Morocco was accused of opening its borders to allow streams of migrants to enter European territory.

In 2021, Ceuta and Melilla, Spain’s other enclave in Africa, also saw a mass incursion of 6,000 people into their territories; Spain explicitly blamed Morocco for deliberately relaxing its migration controls to punish the government for criticizing Trump’s 2020 recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara, which Trump did in exchange for Morocco entering into the Abraham Accords with Israel.

The pressure worked, as Spain acquiesced in 2022 to support Morocco’s autonomy plan for the occupied territory, in exchange for Morocco’s promise that it would not allow further incursions into the enclaves.

France too has often found itself facing down Moroccan tactics to weaponize migration for political concessions. Rabat long refused to accept French returns of undocumented migrant children from Morocco until it secured a package of trade and investment concessions from Paris in 2020. To reward Morocco for acting as Europe’s external border police, the European Union also has time and again rewarded Morocco with hundreds of millions of Euros in aid, most recently as part of the 2024 “EU Migration Pact.”

This time, the exact reasoning behind Morocco’s actions remains unclear. Some analysts wondered whether the move was meant to pressure Spain as a first step toward an attempted annexation of Ceuta, which the Moroccan government views as illegally occupied.

While officially, the U.S. government recognizes Ceuta as sovereign Spanish territory, voices in the U.S. and Israel have increasingly encouraged Morocco to claim the enclave. The timing is uncanny. For example, the 2027 U.S. House Appropriations Bill passed in July included a report specifically asserting that “Spanish-administered cities of Ceuta and Melilla are located in Moroccan territory,” and urged the State Department to encourage talks over their “future status.”

As far back as 2019, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s son Yair tweeted a map of Ceuta and Melilla, saying, “Dear Arabs and Muslims. Want to free occupied Arab Islamic lands? Here’s a good start!” In March, Michael Rubin, a longtime neoconservative analyst with the American Enterprise Institute, openly urged Moroccans to invade the enclaves in a new “Green March,” referring to when Moroccans marched to Western Sahara to claim it from Spain in 1975.

Others argue that Morocco is acting more broadly in service of a U.S.-Israeli campaign to punish Spain for calling on Israel to stop its genocide in Gaza and refusing to support the war on Iran.

The circumstantial evidence for a broader strategy is significant. Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has been a particular thorn in the side of the U.S. and Israel, emerging as a leading global critic of both countries. In the past three years, Sanchez has imposed arms and settlement trade embargoes on Israel and refused to allow U.S.-flagged cargo ships carrying weapons for Israel, as well as an Israeli warship, to dock or refuel at Spanish ports. (Both ships docked in Moroccan ports instead.) More recently, Sanchez refused to allow the U.S. to use jointly operated military bases on Spanish soil for military operations for the war with Iran.

The Trump administration has already threatened to punish Spain with a full trade embargo, particularly dangerous given Spain’s reliance on the U.S. for 30% of its gas and 20% of its oil imports. Israel withdrew its ambassador from Spain in 2024 and expelled Spain from the Civil-Military Coordination Center, which ostensibly oversees the ceasefire and humanitarian aid to Gaza.

But the Ceuta incursion unleashed a whole new level of rhetorical fire from Israeli and U.S. officials and right-wing commentators, who jumped on the incident to blame Sanchez’s left-wing government for failing to protect its borders from African migrants, to mock its “colony” in Africa, and even to urge Morocco to overtake the enclaves from Spain for itself.

Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, tweeted, “Maybe before it continues lecturing us, it’s time it explained to the world why it still maintains colonial enclaves in Africa.” J.D. Vance chimed in to chide the incursion as the “consequences of mass migration and the radical left-wing globalist policies that have enabled the Invasion of the West,” while President Trump warned, “That’s going to be us in three years if the wrong side gets in.”

The Israel-U.S.-Morocco trifecta has grown stronger and more coordinated ever since Morocco signed the Abraham Accords, normalizing its relationship with Israel, in exchange for U.S. recognition of its sovereignty over Western Sahara. The Moroccan government, a monarchical dictatorship, has ignored overwhelming domestic opposition to Israel and has dramatically expanded its military, security and economic ties with the country, rivaling only the United Arab Emirates for the closest Arab-Israeli government relationship.

In 2021, Israel and Morocco signed a vast defense cooperation agreement, and Morocco is now one of Israel’s largest arms purchasers; it has expanded intelligence sharing and counterterrorism cooperation and signed at least nine agreements, including on cybersecurity, trade, tourism, agriculture, and energy. In exchange, Israel itself recognized Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara, a useful precedent for its own wish to annex what remains of Palestine.

Morocco has not issued any formal statement about its role in the Ceuta incursion, nor offered any condolences to the migrants who perished. But by July 31, it had dramatically expanded its deployment of forces to secure the enclave and provided transportation for the 48,000 migrants who returned to Morocco a day after arriving in Ceuta.

Whatever the immediate precipitating factor for the migrant incursion, it has served as a useful political cudgel for Israel and the United States.

The new migration blackmail now has impacts that extend far beyond the borders of Spain or Europe, just as the U.S.-Israeli conflict over Palestine now reaches deep into the politics of African and Latin American states.