Sudan to normalize ties with Israel after US ultimatum - report
Sudan has reportedly decided to move forward with normalizing ties with Israel, after the US reportedly issued a 24-hour ultimatum to the country demanding that it recognize Israel in order to be removed from a US blacklist, a source close to Sudan's leadership told i24News.Sudanese Researcher: Our Normalization with Israel Will Lead to Normalization with the U.S.
The decision was made after a heated discussion on Wednesday, according to the news station.
The ultimatum reportedly included an offer to remove Sudan from the list of states that sponsor terrorism, work to remove Sudan from a list of travel ban countries, work to increase aid to Sudan, commitment to facilitate private investment in Sudan, arranging an investment conference in Sudan and forgiveness of billions of dollars of Sudanese debt to the US, among other benefits, according to a Sudanese journalist.
In September, Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok said that the country does not want to link its removal from a US terrorism list, which is hindering access to foreign funding for the country’s economy, with a normalization of relations with Israel. However, Sudan’s leaders did not rule out establishing ties with Israel as part of a US offer of $300 million in economic aid, as well as $3 billion in debt relief and investments.
Earlier this month, deputy chairman of the Sudanese Sovereignty Council Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo told TV station Sudania 24 that his country ascribes great importance to establishing ties with Israel so that it can be removed from the United States’ terror list.
Four ways the Abraham Accords dismantle the anti-Israel camp’s narrative
First, the Abraham Accords sound the death knell for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign. BDS was built on the foundations and legacy of the Arab Boycott of Israel, initiated as a boycott of the pre-state Yishuv by the Arab League in 1945. With key Arab states now formally embracing trade and diplomatic deals with Israel, it looks ridiculous and out of touch with the reality of the region or Arab opinion for radicals in Europe and North America to continue to pursue a boycott policy.
Secondly, the Abraham Accords demolish the narrative that Israel is engaged in a race-based and hence racist oppression of the Palestinians, and hence the apartheid smear and the BDS policies that flow from the false comparison with apartheid South Africa. Emiratis and Bahrainis are the same ethnicity as the Palestinians: Arab. If Israel is able to have normalised and mutually beneficial relations with other Arab states it stands to reason that the occupation is down to a political impasse with the Palestinians, not a race-based desire to subjugate them.
Thirdly, the Abraham Accords destroy the narrative that the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is based on an inevitable religious clash between Jews and Muslims. The UAE and Bahrain are predominantly Muslim societies just like Palestinian society. If anything, they are more monolithically Muslim than Palestinian society is. This deal proves Israel can have good relationships with Muslim countries. The way in which the deal uses language about the mutual heritage of the three Abrahamic religions acknowledges that Jews are indigenous to the Middle East.
This last point links to the fourth aspect, which is that the Abraham Accords draw a line under historic Arab delegitimisation of Israel and the narrative that saw it as a temporary, colonialist imposition that could be destroyed. The deal shows the rest of the Arab world is growing impatient with Palestinian intransigence, and has moved to seeing Israel in pragmatic rather than ideological terms, as a permanent feature in the region that doesn’t just have to be accepted but can actually be a useful trading partner and security ally against Iran and its proxies. The contrast between practical steps by other Arab nations and the Palestinian Authority’s history of rejecting Israeli offers, even when its people would be the main beneficiary, is very stark.
As well as opening the door to a better life for many people in the region, the Accords have just made it a lot easier for all of us who have always proudly defended Israel here in the UK to win the ideological arguments with the delegitimisers, who increasingly find themselves on the opposite side to much of the Arab World, let alone Israel and its traditional allies.
David Singer: Jordan and Saudis tighten screws on PLO and Hamas
Saudi Arabia and Jordan have engaged in a twin-pronged attack on the PLO and Hamas seemingly intended to get them to bury the hatchet and begin negotiations with Israel on allocating sovereignty in Gaza and Judea and Samaria ('West Bank') under President Trump’s 2020 Peace Plan.
Prince Bandar bin Sultan Al-Saud – Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States 1983 - 2005, secretary general of the National Security Council 2005-2019 and director general of the Saudi Intelligence Agency 2012 - 2014 - provides a fascinating insight into the many failures of the Palestinian Arab leadership he witnessed from 1978 to 2015 in an Arab News article headlined “Setting the record straight”.
Bandar is particularly critical of the PLO and Hamas - after Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah brought PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal to Mecca for crisis talks in February 2007 to end the deadly PLO-Hamas violence that had followed the January 2005 presidential election won by Abbas and the January 2006 legislative election won by Hamas:
“After (King Abdullah) checked what they had written and read it in front of everyone and asked them to vow before God and in front of everyone that they agree to this deal, he asked them to shake hands and congratulated them, saying, ‘God is our witness, and we are in his holy land. (Prince) Saud (bin Faisal), take the brothers to the Kaaba and let them pledge their word before God and before the Palestinian people.’ Only a few days after they left Saudi Arabia, we received news they had already gone back on their word and started conspiring and plotting against each other once again.”
No elections since 2006 and no reconciliation between the PLO and Hamas continues.
Bandar recalls the many times the Palestinian Arab leadership asked Saudi Arabia for advice and help – took the help but ignored the advice:
“Then they would fail and turn back to us again, and we would support them again, regardless of their mistakes,” he said. This nature of the relationship, he felt, might have convinced the Palestinian Arab leadership that “there is no price to pay for any mistakes they commit towards the Saudi leadership or the Saudi state, or the Gulf leaderships and states.”
Reconciling their differences is the price the PLO and Hamas have to pay for future Saudi help - following peace treaties signed by Israel with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain whilst Saudi Arabia has granted Israel’s commercial airlines the right to fly in Saudi Arabian air space.