'Occupied' Ceuta?

Spain's exclave in North Africa and 'pro-Israel' discourse

The Spanish exclave of Ceuta (Arabic: Sabta/سبتة) located in North Africa and surrounded by Morocco recently came to widespread mass media attention as tens of thousands of purported migrants sought to enter the exclave via Morocco, with dozens of them being killed as a result.

I will not get into the controversies about whether Morocco engineered the mass migration or the various reasons analysts have offered for why this happened, but I will address the jubilation found among some ‘pro-Israel’ commentators who portray Ceuta as some kind of Spanish colony or claim that it is territory ‘occupied’ by Spain and rightfully belonging to Morocco. One of the most prominent representatives of this line of thinking is pundit Michael Rubin, who has urged Morocco to bulldoze the borders and send in thousands of Moroccans to overrun Ceuta and Melilla (the latter being the other Spanish exclave in North Africa).

One may wonder whether Rubin is simply engaged in an exercise in trolling dressed up as supposedly serious policy analysis. But his motivation here is fairly easy to discern. He also called to ban Spain from the World Cup, citing the supposed Spanish ‘occupation’ of Ceuta and Melilla and lambasting the Spanish government for ‘anti-Israel’ policy and opposing the U.S. and Israeli war against Iran. In other words, he is making this line of argument because he does not like the current Spanish government’s policies towards Israel and the U.S. It is unlikely he would be making these arguments if the Spanish government were staunchly behind Israel and the U.S.

But what of the claim that Ceuta is ‘occupied’ and rightfully belongs to Morocco?