The Israeli Intelligence Minister said in a televised interview on Monday that Tel Aviv and Khartoum are preparing to sign a normalization agreement similar to the one signed between his country and the United Arab Emirates.
“A normalization agreement with Sudan is coming soon. This historical agreement may be signed before the new year,” Eli Cohen told KAN, the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation.
This announcement was preceded by several gestures or concrete actions by the new Sudanese authorities.
Last February, a first direct public and official contact between Tel Aviv and Khartoum took place in Entebbe, Uganda. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, head of the Sudanese Sovereign Council, met there with the Israeli Prime Minister, Benyamin Netanyahu.
Only two days after this meeting, normalization started with a military spokesman announcing in Khartoum that Israeli planes could use Sudanese airspace.
Abdel Fattah al-Burhan then told the press that a small committee had been formed to study normalization between the two countries. Several sources speak of “numerous contacts, during the last few months, between Khartoum and Tel Aviv.
On May 24, for example, the day of the end of Ramadan, Beyamin Netanyahu announced in the Council of Ministers that he had called his Sudanese counterpart to wish him happy feast of al-Fitr and to express his desire to develop bilateral relations.
For their part, Israeli media have revealed that contacts between Sudan and Israel are ongoing and that delegations from both countries “are intensively pursuing preparations to finalize the agreement”.
Victim of a very hard economic crisis due to American sanctions and the amputation of the majority of its oil resources since the independence of Southern Sudan, Sudan is now betting on the potential repercussions of this acceleration of normalization with Israel.
