The Perejil Island crisis in July 2002 was not simply a brief confrontation between Morocco and Spain over a small islet off the Moroccan coast. Within days, it had become a test of how different capitals viewed Rabat and its position in the dispute. It also showed that Algeria had chosen a position distinct from that of much of the Arab and Muslim world, which had expressed support for Morocco.
More than two decades later, occupied Ceuta has once again become part of a major Moroccan-Spanish crisis, this time through a large-scale migration episode that shook the city at the end of July 2026. As the events unfolded, part of the Algerian media discourse adopted a reading that placed political responsibility on Morocco, while repeatedly presenting Ceuta and Melilla as Spanish cities and portraying migration as a Moroccan instrument of pressure on Spain and the European Union.
The two crises are obviously not the same. The circumstances, actors and stakes have changed considerably. There is no basis for treating them as one event. But the way Morocco has been portrayed in the two episodes points to something older than either crisis itself: the Algerian-Moroccan confrontation has never been confined to a single dispute. Over decades, it has developed around Morocco’s regional position, the expansion of its influence and what Algeria has regarded as its own strategic and security interests.
During the Perejil Island crisis, Morocco’s position was clear. Rabat regarded the islet as part of its territory and brought the matter before the United Nations Security Council, while maintaining that the dispute should be resolved through diplomatic means. Spain, for its part, used its armed forces to remove Moroccan gendarmes who had landed on the island. The crisis eventually ended with a return to the previous status quo following an agreement reached through American mediation.
What deserves attention today is not only what happened between Rabat and Madrid, but also what happened around that confrontation.
On 19 July 2002, Le Monde reported that Morocco could count on Arab support during the crisis, «with the exception of Algeria». The French daily noted that most Muslim countries had supported Morocco’s claims, while the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference had called on Spain to end its occupation of what the newspaper described as the «Moroccan island».
There is no need to attach a meaning to this historical fact that goes beyond the evidence. Algeria did not join the broad Arab position that emerged in support of Morocco. That fact alone is worth noting, particularly because the dispute at the time was directly between Morocco and Spain, not between Morocco and Algeria.
Morocco was facing a European power that had deployed its forces to remove Moroccan personnel from an islet off the Moroccan coastline. Algeria, meanwhile, chose not to align itself with the Arab position supporting Rabat.
The issue has returned in a different form with Ceuta and Melilla.
During the latest migration crisis, the debate quickly moved beyond the movement of migrants and attempts to cross the border. It returned to an older question: the status of the two occupied cities, their place in the political discourse of each side and the way every Moroccan-Spanish crisis can acquire a meaning that extends beyond Rabat and Madrid.
The Ceuta crisis was substantial. Spanish documents recently made public showed that Spain’s intelligence services had issued warnings before the mass crossings on 30 July about the possibility of such an operation. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez subsequently rejected the conclusion that Morocco had organized or planned the events.
That point matters because it prevents the episode from being reduced to a narrative in which Rabat necessarily decided in advance to organize the crossings. The warnings existed, mobilization was circulating on social media, and Spanish authorities had been aware of several signs pointing to an escalation. At the same time, the Spanish government did not present evidence establishing that Morocco had ordered the organization of the operation.
Part of the Algerian media discourse nevertheless adopted another interpretation, portraying Morocco as responsible for the crisis while reaffirming the «Spanishness» of Ceuta and Melilla.
Journalistically, however, it would be problematic to turn every article or media publication in Algeria into an official position of the Algerian state. The two levels cannot simply be equated. Media discourse, even when operating within a particular political environment, does not automatically constitute a diplomatic statement.
What can be compared is therefore less the presumed intention of each journalist than the persistence of certain ways of viewing Morocco.
This is where the historical record becomes useful.
American documents from the 1970s show that Algeria was not looking at the Sahara issue solely through the prism of decolonization or self-determination. A U.S. State Department document examining Algerian calculations at the time also describes geopolitical concerns linked to Morocco’s position and the possibility of Rabat increasing its regional weight.
The document indicates that Algeria did not have its own territorial claim to the Sahara, while nevertheless considering itself to have political and security interests in the evolution of the dispute. Morocco appeared in Algerian calculations as a neighbor capable of becoming a rival, particularly because of the memory of the 1963 Sand War and earlier Moroccan territorial claims.
The same document reveals Algerian concern about the possibility of Moroccan sovereignty extending over the Sahara. This dimension becomes particularly visible in the American assessment of possible future scenarios: Algeria was expected to oppose a bilateral settlement between Spain and Morocco that would grant Rabat sovereignty over the territory, and U.S. officials believed that the Algerians could use the diplomatic means available to them to prevent such an agreement.
The nature of this source must, of course, be kept in mind. It is an American diplomatic document, not an official Algerian declaration. It tells us how Washington assessed Algerian motivations at the time. Its value nevertheless lies partly in its date: it allows us to see, several decades back, the importance that regional balance already had in American assessments of Algerian policy.
Other American documents from the same period similarly describe Moroccan-Algerian tensions, the military competition between the two countries and Algeria’s support for the Polisario Front. They also portray Algeria as a regional power concerned with preserving its position in the face of Morocco.
The Algerian dispute with Morocco therefore cannot be reduced to a single word, even when «hostility» describes part of the political reality. There is a clear dimension of confrontation, but there is also a strategic dimension: concern about a shift in the balance of power in the Maghreb in Morocco’s favor, the memory of the Sand War, the Moroccan Sahara issue and, more broadly, the competition for regional influence.
The distinction between hostility and strategic fear matters here.
Hostility may help explain why an unfavorable discourse about Morocco can reappear even in crises in which Algeria is not directly involved. Strategic fear better explains why Morocco’s regional advances can be viewed in Algiers as developments capable of altering the balance of power in the Maghreb.
The Perejil Island crisis had already revealed this particularity. Morocco was confronting Spain, much of the Arab and Muslim world was expressing support for Rabat, while Algeria remained outside that collective position. More than two decades later, the Ceuta crisis has brought the same question back in a different form: what does each Moroccan-Spanish crisis mean within political calculations that extend beyond the relationship between Rabat and Madrid?
This does not mean that Algeria always acts in exactly the same way, nor that Algerian media automatically express decisions taken by the state. Foreign policy is more complicated than that. But the persistence of certain perceptions of Morocco—from Perejil Island to the Sahara and now to Ceuta and Melilla—makes it difficult to treat every episode as entirely disconnected from the longer history of Moroccan-Algerian relations.
Morocco in 2026 is not the Morocco of 2002. Its relationship with Spain has changed profoundly. Economic, security and migration partnerships have become increasingly important, while the Kingdom’s position in Africa, the Arab world and on the international stage has also evolved.
Algeria, for its part, continues to view the Maghreb balance of power with particular sensitivity to any expansion of Moroccan influence.
This is perhaps where the Ceuta crisis moves beyond migration alone. It opens another window onto a Maghreb relationship that is older than the crisis itself—a relationship in which Morocco has simultaneously been a neighbor, a competitor and a regional actor whose advances are repeatedly reassessed in Algerian calculations.
If the Perejil Island crisis showed more than two decades ago that Algeria could remain outside a broad Arab and Muslim position when Morocco was confronting Spain, the debate surrounding Ceuta raises the same question today in a different form: have the instruments of confrontation changed while some of the fundamental perceptions of Morocco have remained?
The facts do not reveal everything being decided within Algerian circles of power. They do, however, make it possible to trace certain constants across several decades. Among them is a point that is difficult to overlook: Morocco’s growing weight—whether through its relations with Spain, its presence in Africa or its influence across its Arab surroundings—continues to be viewed in Algiers through the prism of a regional balance that the two countries clearly do not perceive in the same way.
