{"id":319243,"date":"2026-08-10T12:00:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-10T11:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=319243"},"modified":"2026-08-08T20:20:25","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T19:20:25","slug":"the-real-story-behind-the-human-wave-that-entered-ceuta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2026\/08\/the-real-story-behind-the-human-wave-that-entered-ceuta\/","title":{"rendered":"The Real Story Behind the Human Wave That Entered Ceuta"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Tens of thousands of Moroccans and others entered the small city of Ceuta, Spain, on Thu 30 Jul 2026. (Marcos Moreno \/ Anadolu via Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

Did the Israeli and US hostility toward Spain embolden Morocco to think it could get away with creating a border control crisis?<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

3 Aug 2026\u00a0<\/em>– What prompted the scenes this past week of 50,000 Moroccans and others streaming into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta is more complicated than it seems. Ceuta<\/a> is one of two Spanish presidios on the north coast of Morocco that have been inhabited by Spaniards for centuries and, like the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean and the Canary Islands in the Atlantic, are recognized Spanish territories. Being the only part of the European Union with a land border with an African nation, it has long been a destination for migrants desperate to cross that heavily fortified international boundary.<\/p>\n

The human wave that entered Ceuta, including the dozens who drowned trying to get around the border fence sticking out into the sea, were not such desperate refugees, however. Video footage<\/a> indicates that virtually none of them were carrying bags or other personal belongings. There are also videos<\/a> showing truckloads of young men, apparently organized by the Moroccan government, being ferried to the edge of Ceuta, as well as scenes of Moroccan border guards<\/a> waving them through. It even appears that Moroccan intelligence agents<\/a> were among the crowd in an apparent effort to get a better sense of border security and the Spanish response. Indeed, having tens of thousands of people simultaneously appear at the frontier undoubtedly required major logistical support.<\/p>\n

This provocation appears to have been designed by the Moroccan regime to embarrass Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez in response to his efforts to warm relations<\/a> with Morocco\u2019s longtime geopolitical rival Algeria, a key supplier of natural gas made scarce as a result of the Ukraine and Iran wars and whose president he met with the previous week. The Moroccans orchestrated a similar cross-border influx in 2021 in retaliation for Spain\u2019s allowing Western Sahara President Brahim Ghali, whose nation Morocco claims for itself, into the country for medical treatment.<\/p>\n

Perhaps not coincidentally, this comes at a time when the American and Israeli governments have been furious at Spain\u2019s Socialist government over its support for Palestinian rights and opposition to the Iran War.<\/a><\/p>\n

Trump has labeled Spain as \u201chopeless<\/a>,\u201d with \u201cbad people,\u201d in response to Sanchez\u2019s not increasing the country\u2019s military budget as much as he demanded and, in particular, Madrid\u2019s refusal to allow US military bases on Spanish territory to be used in the war on Iran or to allow overflight by US military aircraft. Last month, Trump directed the secretary of the treasury to cut trade ties<\/a> with Spain, despite that being impossible due to Spain\u2019s membership in the EU, and he was looking for other ways of punishing Madrid.<\/p>\n

Given how Trump has developed a greater affinity with repressive Arab monarchs like Morocco\u2019s King Mohammed VI than with traditional European allies, it is perhaps not surprising that he would criticize rather than defend a NATO ally faced with a violation of their sovereign territory.<\/p>\n

American political figures allied with Trump have been openly supporting the idea of Morocco\u2019s taking control of the two Spanish territories. Michael Rubin<\/a> of the American Enterprise Institute has called for a Moroccan conquest of the presidios, and Representative Mario D\u00edaz-Balart<\/a> (R-FL), who chairs the House Subcommittee on National Security and is one of Secretary of State Marco Rubio\u2019s closest congressional liaisons, recently declared that the enclaves \u201care not in the geographic territory of Spain\u201d but rather\u2014despite having not been part of Morocco for over 600 years\u2014are \u201cin the territory of Morocco.\u201d<\/p>\n

Similarly, an article published in the right-wing Israeli media outlet ynet<\/em><\/a> in March directly called on Israel to support Morocco\u2019s irredentist claims as a means of discrediting the Spanish government\u2019s opposition to the Israeli occupation by insisting that Spain itself was an occupier.<\/p>\n

Indeed, Israeli government officials<\/a> and pro-Israel advocates<\/a> in the United States have been hammering the message that the Spanish government is a colonialist oppressor and therefore has no right to criticize Israel, ignoring the fact that the enclaves have a majority of ethnic Spaniards and there is little indication that even their ethnic Arab and Berber residents would prefer to live under the autocratic Moroccan monarchy.<\/p>\n

While having any European territory on African soil is certainly problematic regardless of its particular history and demographics, it is hard to imagine that these right-wing figures are actually motivated by anti-colonialism.<\/p>\n

In addition, the wave of border crossings has created images that far-right parties<\/a> in Europe are now using to claim that there is an uncontrollable refugee crisis, feeding racist and xenophobic attacks against Sanchez and other left-leaning governments for allowing a foreign \u201cinvasion\u201d of EU territory. Conservative European governments have demanded that Spain be removed<\/a> from the Schengen Zone that allows for passport-free movement within most of Europe despite the fact that Spain maintains tight internal migration control between the presidios and the Spanish mainland and that none of 50,000 who illegally crossed into Ceuta have made it onto the European continent.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, in the United States<\/a>, Vice President JD Vance blamed the border crossings on \u201cradical left-wing globalist policies that have enabled the Invasion of the West,\u201d while Trump warned<\/a> that scenes similar to those of the tens of thousands of dark-skinned people storming the border in Ceuta would occur in the United States as well if Democrats get back into office.<\/p>\n

Ironically, rather than being anti-colonial, Morocco itself is a colonial power, having illegally invaded, occupied, annexed, and colonized the nation of Western Sahara<\/a>, a full member state of the African Union and recognized by the United Nations as a non-self-governing territory. The United States<\/a> and Israel are the only two countries to formally recognize that occupied country as being under Moroccan sovereignty.<\/p>\n

Morocco has long used the threat of opening the floodgates of migrants into Spain and other European nations to extract political and economic concessions, including in regard to Western Sahara. It has led even Sanchez<\/a>, soon after the 2021 incident in Ceuta, to endorse Morocco\u2019s dubious \u201cautonomy\u201d plan<\/a> for Western Sahara, which would supersede the Western Saharans\u2019 right to self-determination and create the dangerous precedent of international recognition of a country\u2019s territorial expansion by force. Other left-leaning European governments have done the same, willing to sacrifice international legal principles out of concern that a massive refugee flow would hurt their political capital and bolster the far right.<\/p>\n

The assault on Ceuta is part of a long-standing Moroccan tradition of appearing \u201canti-colonial\u201d as a cover for their own colonialism. Along with a simultaneous armed invasion, Morocco assembled 300,000 unarmed Moroccans in the 1975 \u201cGreen March\u201d to lay claim to Western Sahara on the verge of its independence from Spain. The conquest, quietly supported by the United States<\/a>, came in direct contravention of a landmark decision of the International Court of Justice<\/a> and a series of UN Security Council resolutions<\/a> calling for self-determination. A brutal military occupation remains to this day.<\/p>\n

The recent border crossings, therefore, were neither a genuine humanitarian crisis nor part of an anti-colonial struggle, but part of efforts by the growing US-Israeli-Moroccan nexus\u2014codified and strengthened by the so-called Abraham Accords\u2014to weaken a progressive European government, divide Europe, and undermine international law and human rights.<\/p>\n

________________________________________________<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Stephen Zunes is a leading scholar of U.S. Middle East policy and of strategic nonviolent action. He is\u00a0a professor of politics and international studies at the University of San Francisco and serves as an editorial fellow at the<\/span><\/em> Tikkun Institute. <\/span>\u00a0Zunes is the author, along with Jacob Mundy, of <\/span><\/em>Western Sahara: War, Nationalism, and Conflict Irresolution <\/span>(Syracuse University Press, 2010).<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 thenation.com<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

3 Aug 2026\u00a0– Did the Israeli and US hostility toward Spain embolden Morocco to think it could get away with creating a border control crisis? – What prompted the scenes this past week of 50,000 Moroccans and others streaming into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta is more complicated than it seems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":319244,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[4107,1268,87,865,88,883,608,427,250,70],"class_list":["post-319243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe","tag-ceuta","tag-european-union","tag-gaza","tag-genocide","tag-israel","tag-migrants","tag-morocco","tag-palestine","tag-spain","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319243"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":319246,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319243\/revisions\/319246"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/319244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}