There is an overlapping of feelings, doubts, and considerations between the cases of former dissident Abraham Serfaty and activist Aminato Haidar. For instance, in 1999, Serfaty - who has Jewish origins - returned to Morocco, in light of a decision made by King Mohammad allowing the return of dissidents and exiled persons. The decision also involved lifting the house arrest off Sheikh Abed al-Salam Yassin, the guide of the banned "Justice and Charity" Organization. Ten years later, the same scene is repeated, albeit in a different manner. Serfaty, who was exiled to Paris on charges of carrying a Brazilian nationality, continued to hang on to his Moroccan identity, considering that his birth in a country in South America does not cancel out his origins, although he tasted the bitterness of prison torture along with his friends who belonged to a radical leftist organization in the 1970s. Activist Haidar insists that she is not Moroccan, and has pressed on for abandoning her Moroccan passport, although she was born in the town of Tata, in indisputable regions north the Sahara provinces. Regarding the commonalities and differences between both cases, Serfaty benefited from the openness to become a Moroccan citizen, contrary to what former Interior Minister Idris claimed, while Haidar benefited from the same climate to announce in front of everyone that she is not Moroccan. In both cases, dealing with the Sahara dossier was based on the fact that it is the central issue that divided the ranks. Serfaty, who raised his hand in victory before the court in Casablanca, was an advocate for self-determination, before he soon adopted the call for a dialogue with the Polisario leaders over the self-autonomy formula, seeing that it was the only solution looming at the horizon. For her part, Aminato Haidar sought to overstep the principle of self-determination, and admitted that there is another entity she wants to return to, rejecting the Moroccan nationality. This is despite the fact that the Sahara negotiations brokered by the United Nations aim at looking for a political solution, of which the aspect pertaining to self-determination is controversial. There is a debate over what will the pending negotiations lead to, those same ones whose stagnancy European and international sides insist on ending, as it was reported that some activists whom the committee for determining identity refused to register in the lists of qualified voters as to the referendum plan for 1991, under the pretext that they hail from indisputable Sahara regions. Further than this, there are those who lead the so-called "Internal Dissidents Wing", while the refugee commission still faces difficulties in surveying the citizens hailing from Sahara origins in Tindov camps, as reiterated recently by the officials in charge. In a nutshell, regardless of the fate of negotiations and what other mechanisms should be adopted to push forward a political settlement, there still remain the controversies on learning the identity of the Sahara figures who are qualified to take part in any popular referendum. As long as the issue is unsettled, on the basis of the historical belonging and the components of the Sahara identity, it will be difficult to achieve a progress that secures the end of the crisis. Back to the cases of Serfary and Haidar, there are differences in the way of dealing with their humanitarian situations, not the political ones. For instance, the French, under Socialist President Francois Mitterrand, did not over-exaggerate the issue of Serfaty. According to President Mitterrand, he was the first who called on late King Al-Hasan II to take his time in crystallizing a political settlement to the conflict, while the political class in Spain is divided over whether to deport activist Haidar who chose to intentionally abandon her Moroccan nationality. Just as Paris was exposed to pressures at the time because the dossier of human rights – which was not promising in Morocco – was manipulated, Madrid is facing similar criticisms in another era, in which Rabat supported more openness to improve its record in this regard. Certainly, Paris and Madrid meet at any event in which the chairmanship of the European Union moves to their geographical space.
