Echos of the Gaza conflict in Morocco

In both the Arab world and in the Arabophone communities abroad, there seems to be a consensus on the death of the pan-arab ideal, so skillfully animated by Nasser's politics. Since the well-known and failed attempt at a unity between Egypt and Syria, in light of the generally acknowledged disfunctionality  of the Arab League (the institution which unites the 22 heads of state of the Arab world), the pan-arab ideal is considered dead. But is it? 

Politically this is certainly the case. Even smaller groupings such as the GCC have a difficult time coordinating their policies on a range of economic issues (ex. the delayed and mystic currency union), let alone their political stance. Observers point to the emergence of a 'stable' sunni crescent of Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia and the 'dissenting' shia crescent of Iran, Qatar (and even some non-state actors such as the Hezbollah in Lebanon). This political split became once again evident in the recent Israeli-Hamas conflict in Qaza, where Qatar and Iran lambasted Israel for irresponsible killing of civilians, while radio silence was heard from Jordan and Egypt. The Jodanian leadership, with its own sizeable palestinian population, could win some browny points from their electorate by engaging in populist rhetoric against Israel, chose not to, probably in part to internal standing considerations as well as for the fear of adding fuel to an already combustive mixture. The Egyptian leadership was coerced and coalesced by France to maintain this radio silence, which in any case they had no reason to break. After all Hamas is an offshoot of Muslim Brotherhood - Mubarak's biggest threat. 

The sense of pan-arab unity is clearly dead on the political front. Is it so also on the social one? Well, while the politicians were considering the various trade-offs and ceding to international pressure, the 'arab street' for the lack of a better term, was certainly in a clear agreement against the Israeli position. Of course, the reaction to the conflict was not only contained to the Arab world, with several  manifestations across European cities, but if one looks closer to the cities where such expressions were the strongest, those cities feature large arab populations. London and Paris are both clear examples of this.

While the inhabitants of the chick and rich Gulf may look down in certain way on their poorer Moroccan and Tunisian cousins, when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, everyone is clear on which side they are on. There is simply no discussion. As far as Morocco, the suffering of Gazans during the last conflict, clearly reverberated with the people. During my last trip to Morocco, I even learned that some creative Moroccan mind has created and distributed a hoax which persuaded Moroccans to boycott certain outflits such as MacDonalds, since allegedly, a part of its profits was sent to Israel (with the obvious pre-text of financing their military). This may of course sounds absurd to any logical person, who knows that MacDonalds is a franchise and that there is no that it's Moroccan owner would be sending money to Israel, but apparently not to an average macdo consumer in the country.

But a larger question which looms behind all this, is why would an average Moroccan refuse him or herself adecent halal burger because of some alleged link from Macdo to Gaza? The answer, so unintuitive to me, who sees so little in common between Palestine and Morocco, is that this alleged link is somehow real to these people. The Gaza conflict resonates as far as Morocco. For the thousands of Tunisians, Moroccans and other, the whole pan-Arab ideal is much more real that the talk of political and economic unity. They are already voting with their wallets in macdonalds while the politicians are scrambling over their votes in regional and international institutions.