Sat 24 October 2020:
Israel and Sudan agreed on Friday agreed to normalize relations in a deal brokered with the help of the United States, making Sudan the third Arab country to set aside hostilities with Israel in the past two months.
Trump has told the U.S. Congress he will rescind Sudan’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism, the White House said Friday after Sudan transferred $335 million into an account for victims and their families. Last month, Sudanese officials discussed its removal from the U.S. terrorism list in the UAE in return for the recognition of Israel, reports stated.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Friday slammed the announcement of a normalization deal between Israel and Sudan, saying no one else had the right to speak on behalf of the Palestinians.
Abbas “condemns and rejects” the normalization of ties between Israel and Sudan which was announced earlier by US President Donald Trump, following similar deals with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in recent months.
The Palestinian Presidency in a statement condemned and rejected the “normalization of relations with the Israeli occupation state that usurps the land of Palestine.”
For his part, Abbas Zaki, a senior member of Fatah group, said that the normalization agreement between Khartoum and Tel Aviv would allow Israel to plunder Sudan’s wealth.
He went on to say that “catching up with Israel in this serious circumstance is for the sake of a new Middle East, in which Israel becomes the ruler of the Arab region.”
He added that normalization has become an “electoral case,” and that “Trump found among the Arabs who could give up their religion and core cause for his success and the success of [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu.”
Zaki added that the countries which normalized with Israel will gain no benefit but will allow Israel to “plunder their wealth and control their human and material energy.”
Also, Hamas group considered the normalization of relations between Sudan and Israel “a political sin that harms our Palestinian people and their just cause.”
Hazem Qassem, a spokesman for the movement, told Anadolu Agency, “the normalization between Sudan and the occupation harms the national interests of Sudan and the national interests of the Arab nation.”
He added, “normalization only serves the Zionist project and its expansionist policy in the region, and Trump benefits from it in the presidential elections and Netanyahu in his internal [political] struggle.”
Egypt, the first country to sign a deal with Israel in 1979, was one of the few Arab countries to publicly welcome the Israel-Sudan deal.
“I welcome the joint efforts of the United States, Sudan and Israel to normalize relations between Sudan and Israel and I value all efforts aimed at establishing regional peace and stability,” Egyptian leader Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi tweeted.
Trump speculated Friday that Saudi Arabia and four other Arab nations could be next to sign normalization deals with Israel. He invoked the 2002 Saudi-led Arab Peace Initiative, which conditioned normalization between Israel and the Arab World upon the establishment of a Palestinian state.
The Palestinians were hardly mentioned in the announcement of the latest deal.
The deal is a further blow to the “Arab consensus” that has long held that Arab states will only normalize ties if Israel meets a number of conditions.
One demand is for Israel to withdraw from the territories it captured in the Six Day War of 1967.
Israel has normally been at war with Sudan, which supported Egypt during the wars with Israel in the 1960s and 1970s. In the wake of the Six-Day War in 1967, the Arab League summit in Khartoum declared “no” to three points regarding Israel.
The three included: no peace with, no recognition of and no negotiations with Israel. It was taboo to talk about establishing any kind of relations with Israel.
