No voice should rise over the influx of oil and gas. How many voices have gone hoarse asking for relations between Morocco and Algeria to be renormalized, to no avail? Yet the ratification of an agreement to export Algerian natural gas to Morocco for the production of electrical power has had a greater impact than all of the emotions that were poured out in congratulatory cables. It is perhaps for this reason that the Moroccans and Algerians have called the plan to transport gas towards Spain through Moroccan soil the Arab Maghreb Pipeline, in hopes of taking the first steps to its establishment. Indeed, they had realized that an economic project of such magnitude could withstand every crisis. This was helped by the fact that, in the early 1990s, to the Europeans' need for Algerian natural gas corresponded numerous efforts to establish different kinds of partnerships with the countries of the Maghreb region. In fact, the Americans themselves had entered on the track of a similar partnership. However, instead of the position of North African countries in negotiations being strengthened, each capital dedicated itself to seeking after its own interests, failing to achieve such a wager, which had been tailored to the aspirations of the Maghreb and to the understanding of the Europeans. Scarce was the good news that would come out of the Maghreb region, the day it found within itself the ability to support Arabs stances towards the crisis in the Middle East. Even the Africans, who had looked to the North of the continent as a magnetizing driving force, settled on counting their disasters and their hardships after obstacles rose up in the face of Arab-African dialogue. No matter, as the stagnant surface has been stirred this time to plant a few seeds of hope. At the very least, the dialogue of economic and trade benefits between Morocco and Algeria has finally triumphed over existing sensitivities, and it has the potential, in case it were to spread to the strategic perspective of relations between Rabat and Algiers, to restore to the scene the trappings of lost concord. The matter is nothing more than tantamount to dusting off issues that had been set aside on a shelf. Indeed, ever since the 1960s, the two neighboring countries had drafted a comprehensive system of cooperation and good neighborliness, focused on the growth of the economy at the borders, then headed towards ratifying the Treaty of Good Neighborliness, which was extended over several stages, without this ever taking shape on the ground. Nevertheless, what arouses optimism is the fact that the process of dusting off is headed in the right direction, that of reviving plans of complementarity and shared benefits. An agreement of such economic importance, despite its current limitations, refers to suggestive signs. Indeed, electricity like transportation lights the way to the future, and if the issue is linked to dark pressures that long dominated the atmosphere in the two countries, and in the Maghreb region as a whole, such an agreement rises to the level of a political awakening, one with the potential to change the scene in the neighborhood for the better. Between the words of Morocco's Monarch King Mohammed VI on the new agreement, which has launched the dialogue on economic sectors in the two countries, while waiting for the borders to be reopened, and the strong signals sent by Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika on the qualitative shift achieved by the ratification of a new constitution in Morocco, there is the meeting of shared concerns that had long been delayed and took many years to be expressed. Yet such concerns have today come to strongly impose themselves, whether at the level of integrating the rising social movement that is stirring the Moroccan street, and the questions the leaders of the region are asking themselves about what they have and what they have not done in order to meet the aspirations of the new generation; or at the level of shaping the features of comprehensive rehabilitation that would ensure for North African countries a spacious place under the sun of regional and international transformations. There is nothing new on the track of bilateral relations between the two countries, as they have both maintained their stances and their positions. Yet what is new and unexpected is that the street has imposed its hegemony. It was thus inevitable to rehash the points of strength and weakness in political experiences. And just as meeting the demands of the street has become the only option for achieving reconciliation with oneself, the perspectives of such reconciliation, in case it reflects on relations between the capitals of the Maghreb, will be much more useful. This is as long as it is unlikely for any country to face alone the difficulties of this period, in the age of the emergence of productive coalitions. The natural gas agreement might be an encouraging start. Yet this will remain contingent on turning it into more comprehensive agreements, the closest being for relations between the two countries to become normal at the very least. Indeed, this would be far better than the seclusion that feeds tensions.
