A real estate developer has decided to reconcile Algeria and Morocco. Algeria heard about it on CBS.
David Ashworth — Londres, Royaume-Uni — 2026-10-03
On 20 October 2025, a man appeared on CBS, on “60 Minutes Overtime”, alongside Jared Kushner.
That man was Steve Witkoff, Donald Trump's special envoy for the Middle East. In civilian life: a real estate developer.
What he announced: his team is working on a “peace deal” between Morocco and Algeria, to be concluded “within 60 days”.
He warned no one. Least of all one of the two countries concerned.
How Algeria found out
On 18 November 2025, a month later, Algeria's foreign minister, Ahmed Attaf, was questioned at a press conference. His answer was a model of ice-cold diplomacy:
“I was surprised by that statement, because, personally, I am not aware of any draft peace agreement between the two countries he mentioned.”
Let us read that sentence again.
The top diplomat of a country learns from the American press that a peace agreement is being prepared involving that country. And he has to face journalists to say he knows nothing about it.
An ally who plans your future without telling you is not an ally. He is a notary.
Then Attaf said the sentence that settles everything
“I think there has been confusion between what the United States is trying to do on the Western Sahara file and Algerian-Moroccan relations.”
“The peace agreement mentioned by Mr Witkoff is that operation, which is an operation between Morocco and the Sahrawis and which lies at the heart of the American initiative. As for the Algerian-Moroccan dimension, it is not on the agenda at present.”
Let us translate.
Witkoff conflated two files that have nothing to do with each other:
- the Western Sahara file, which pits Morocco against the Polisario Front;
- Algerian-Moroccan relations, which have been severed since 2021.
These are not the same parties. These are not the same questions. And he warned neither of them.
And the American think tank asked the real question
Three days after the announcement, the Washington Institute — an American institute, not an Algerian outfit — published a note (PolicyWatch 4125, 23 October 2025, by Sabina Henneberg and Souhire Medini). Its first sentence:
“The two countries have deeply degraded relations, but they are not at war — so what would such an agreement look like?”
There it is.
You do not sign a peace treaty with a country you are not at war with. The word is wrong. And when the word is wrong, in diplomacy, it is rarely a slip.
What the “deal” actually contains
Let us look at what this plan gives each party.
[[BAR]]
What the “Witkoff plan” gives each side
Morocco | resumption of diplomatic relations | what it has been asking for since 2021
Morocco | de facto recognition of its sovereignty over Western Sahara | its main objective
Morocco | consolidated normalisation with Israel | a 2020 achievement
!Algeria | nothing | —
!Algeria | abandonment of its position on the Sahara | what it is being asked for
[[/BAR]]
The tally takes a moment.
Morocco gains everything: the resumption of relations, de facto recognition of its sovereignty over Western Sahara, and a bolstered normalisation with Israel.
Algeria gains nothing. It is simply asked to abandon its position on the right of the Sahrawi people to self-determination — a position it has defended since 1975, and which the UN itself validated by 85 votes to 6 in 1979.
An agreement in which one party gains everything and the other surrenders everything is not called a reconciliation. It is called a surrender — and someone is trying to sell it as good news.
The precedent: 2020
This is not a hypothesis. It has already happened, and in exactly the same way.
In December 2020, Donald Trump announced that the United States recognised Morocco's sovereignty over the whole of Western Sahara. In exchange, Morocco normalised its relations with Israel.
The mechanism is exactly the same, five years later: Rabat is offered recognition of its sovereignty, and the bill is handed to someone else.
A Spanish editorialist, Jalil Mohamed Abdelaziz, wrote it in El Independiente as early as 21 October 2025:
“This initiative looks more like an echo of Trump's transactional diplomacy — inspired by the 2020 Abraham Accords, which normalised relations between Israel and several Arab states, including Morocco — than like a fine understanding of regional dynamics.”
“The most obvious interpretation: the United States is seeking to impose a solution contrary to international law in the decolonisation process of Western Sahara, by de facto recognising Moroccan sovereignty — as Trump already did in 2020 in exchange for normalisation with Israel — and by forcing Algeria and Morocco into a climate of good understanding imposed by force or by the buying of loyalties.”
The sentence that hurts
The same editorialist adds this, which ought to be displayed in every embassy:
“This proposal by Witkoff — a real estate entrepreneur — reveals an administration that profoundly misunderstands Algeria's foreign policy doctrine.”
And he explains why that misunderstanding always produces the same mistake: Washington assumes Algeria works like the Gulf states — that its foreign policy can be bought with investments or traded for security protection.
“That view ignores Algiers' strategic autonomy, forged in its anti-colonial history and its non-aligned leadership, which places it as a sovereign actor and not a pawn on Washington's chessboard, nor on that of any other power.”
A pawn. The word is harsh. It is also accurate: that is precisely how a country is treated when its future is announced on television without so much as a phone call.
So: a Makhzen plan, or improvisation?
Let us put the question plainly, because it deserves an honest answer.
What we know with certainty:
1. Witkoff consulted neither Rabat nor Algiers publicly. Algeria discovered the announcement on CBS.
2. The content of the plan matches Moroccan objectives point by point: normalisation, de facto recognition of sovereignty over the Sahara, consolidation of the rapprochement with Israel.
3. The 2020 precedent is identical: Trump recognised Moroccan sovereignty in exchange for normalisation with Israel.
4. Algeria gains nothing from it.
What cannot be proven:
That the text was written in Rabat. No public document demonstrates it, and we will not write it.
But here is what can be written, and it is stronger:
Whether this plan was dictated by the Makhzen or improvised by a Florida real estate developer, the result is rigorously the same. Morocco gets everything. Algeria must concede everything. And the only thing asked of Algiers is to sign.
A plan whose effect serves one camp does not need to have been written by that camp to serve it.
And since then?
Nothing happened as announced.
The 60 days expired without any agreement. The file fell back into the same hands: those of Massad Boulos, Trump's adviser for Africa — a man who, for his part, did come to Algiers, three times (July 2025, January 2026, September 2026).
And Algeria has not moved a millimetre. Attaf repeated it on 18 November 2025:
“The rhetoric of the closed file or the folded file is not a new or recent phenomenon, but rather a discourse that is repeated and endlessly recycled every time this question is raised before international bodies.”
A peace agreement announced on television, never signed, and whose concerned party was never informed. That is what the diplomacy of the world's greatest power looks like in 2025.
Algeria, for its part, still does not need anyone to explain what it thinks. It says it itself.