US, UAE press ahead to broker Israel-Sudan rapprochement
Sudan might be ready to establish ties with Israel, but first it needs for the United States to remove it from the list of countries sponsoring terrorism.
Three Sudanese parties held a joint conference in Khartoum Sept. 30, calling on the regime to accept an American deal for normalizing ties with Israel. "The American proposal is limited to the upcoming US presidential elections [on Nov. 3], and we shouldn't miss this historic opportunity. After announcement of the results of the US presidential elections, we will enter into a major crisis in Sudan if we don’t agree to the offer made in the Emirates. Sudan will not be removed from the terrorism list for many years if we don’t take advantage of the existing opportunity,” said Mubarak al-Fadel, head of the Umma party.
For Jerusalem, the joint press conference reinforced impressions over Khartoum’s willingness to close a deal soon. A senior Israeli diplomat told Al-Monitor that the ball is now in Sudan’s court. Khartoum must now decide whether or not to accept the proposal made by American officials in Abu Dhabi some 10 days ago for a quadruple package deal.
The deal in the works is far from simple: Israel will achieve ties with a strategically important African country on the shores of the Red Sea; the United States will get a reinforced transitional regime in a country emerging from years of dictatorship; Sudan will be erased from the list of countries sponsoring terrorism and will also receive generous financial aid; and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will receive diplomatic glory over mediating such a deal, along with a hefty bill to pay.
For many years, Sudan considered itself at war with Israel, though it did not participate in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Also, for almost three decades and under former President Omar al-Bashir, the country nurtured ties with Iran and championed the Palestinian cause. But after the 2015 severing of ties with Iran, and especially after the toppling of Bashir in April 2019, the diplomatic discourse in Khartoum changed. Sudan has not decided yet publicly on renewing ties, but all signs indicate it is well on the road for such a move.
