Understanding the Sudan-Israel accord and its background
WASHINGTON DC (Kurdistan 24) – On Friday, it was announced in Washington that Sudan had agreed to normalize relations with Israel, becoming the third Arab country to do so since August, and the fifth to do so since 1979, when a peace agreement was concluded between Egypt and Israel after the 1973 war.
US President Donald Trump announced the agreement between Israel and Sudan to reporters who gathered in the Oval Office, as he conducted a three way conversation, broadcast over speaker phone, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Chairman of Sudan’s Transitional Military Council, Lt. Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and Sudanese Prime Minister, Abdalla Hamdok.
The understanding between Israel and Sudan is part of a bigger package that will see Sudan removed from the US list of state sponsors of terrorism with the payment of $335 million to families of the victims of the near-simultaneous bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania on August 7, 1998.
In announcing the agreement, Trump affirmed that others would follow. “We have many, many more coming,” he said.
Netanyahu appeared to back Trump up, at least in part, as the Israeli Prime Minister affirmed, “We’re all making history—from the Emirates to Bahrain; now with Sudan and other countries that are in line.”
Irony of Sudanese Criticism: Al-Mahdi’s Father Dealt with Israel
Nonetheless, on the following day, Sadiq al-Mahdi, head of Sudan’s largest political party, the Umma (Nation) party, and the country’s last elected prime minister, was quick to criticize the agreement.
It “contradicts the Sudanese national law,” Mahdi complained, “and contributes to the elimination of the peace project in the Middle East and to preparing for the ignition of a new war.”
The criticism was particularly ironic, because Mahdi’s father had headed the Umma party a generation ago. Sudan had been ruled by an Anglo-Egyptian condominium since 1899. In the 1950s, as the Umma party sought to secure Sudan’s independence from both Egypt and Britain, Mahdi’s father, who was also named Sadiq al-Mahdi, reached out to the Israelis to gain their assistance in Washington to help ensure US support for Sudanese independence—as the highly-regarded Israeli journalist, Yossi Melman, explained in a report last February, following high-level contacts between Jerusalem and Khartoum.
Melman’s story included a recent tweet from the Sudanese journalist, Wasil Ali Taha.
1/
— Wasil Ali - واصل علي (@wasilalitaha) February 3, 2020
Little known fact but the Umma party were the first in Sudan to reachout to Israel in the 50's seeking their help with the US to support Sudan independence.
On the right al-Sideeg al-Mahdi (father of former PM & leader of Umma party al-Sadiq al-Mahdi). pic.twitter.com/cG0oTwtAeX
Friday’s agreement followed Israeli efforts to cultivate ties with Sudan—which go back to the last years of Sudan’s military dictator, Omar al-Bashir, who ousted Sadiq al-Mahdi in 1989 and was, then, himself ousted in a coup in April 2019, after months of popular protests.
In the last years of Bashir’s rule, Israel and Sudan conducted secret intelligence exchanges, Melman explained, but with the growing unrest in Khartoum, they ended.
However, such contacts resumed at some point, and earlier this year, in February, Netanyahu met with Burhan in Uganda, at the home of the Ugandan President, Yoweri Museveni.
The Relevance of History: Sudan’s Objectives Like the 1950s
Following Netanyahu’s meeting with Burhan, a senior Israeli official told The Times of Israel that the two parties had agreed to gradually normalize relations.
The Sudanese objective in reaching out to the Israelis was to repair their relations with the US. And, indeed, following his meeting with Burhan, Netanyahu spoke with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and conveyed his view that Sudan was “moving in a new and positive direction,” the Times explained.
Pompeo then spoke with Burhan and they “underscored their shared desire” to “work towards a stronger, healthier U.S.-Sudan bilateral relationship,” according to a State Department read-out of their phone conversation, and thanked Burhan “for his leadership in normalizing ties with Israel” after his meeting with Netanyahu.
What exactly will come out of this agreement remains to be seen, given the opposition expressed in Sudan. The current government is transitional to full civilian rule, with elections slated for 2022.
However, on Saturday evening, Netanyahu held a press conference in which he stated that “an Israeli delegation will leave to Sudan in the coming days to complete the agreement.”
But also Change, 44 Years On
The official residence of Uganda’s president lies in Entebbe, some 23 miles southwest of Uganda’s capital and the site of its largest airport. That is where Netanyahu’s brother, Jonathan, was killed 44 years earlier, as he led an elite commando unit which rescued the passengers of an Air France plane that had been flying from Tel Aviv to Paris.
The plane was hijacked by the Foreign Operations Branch of the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) and flown to Uganda, then ruled by Idi Amin, a brutal and ruthless dictator, who actually welcomed the hijackers.
The non-Israeli passengers were released, but 94 Israelis, along with 12 Air France crew members, were held hostage. The hijackers demanded the release of 40 Palestinians held in Israeli jails, along with 13 prisoners in four other countries, threatening to kill the hostages, if their demands were not met.
The commando raid, led by Jonathan Netanyahu, succeeded in rescuing 102 hostages, but Netanyahu died, along with four of the hostages.
Support for Terrorism from Baghdad
Wadi Haddad headed the PFLP’s Foreign Operations Branch and was said to be the planner behind that and other hijackings. Two years later, Haddad died of cancer in an East German hospital, as the PFLP announced.
After his death, his body was flown to Baghdad, “one of the Arab cities where the underground leader had been living out of public view in recent years,” The New York Times reported.
“No certain successor was in sight to command the splinter group” which Haddad headed, the Times continued, but “analysts in Beirut said they thought a guerrilla with the code name of Abu Nidal, who operates from Iraq, might take over.”
In August 2002, as the US prepared for a war to oust Saddam Hussein following the 9/11 attacks, the regime in Baghdad announced that Abu Nidal had killed himself.
Editing by John J. Catherine