Sudan has become a third Arab and Muslim country after the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to normalise ties with Israel in the past two months.
The deal brokered by the United States was facilitated by State Secretary Mike Pompeo and will see the lifting of sanctions imposed on Khartoum.
U.S. President Donald Trump announced the agreement after holding a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok and Transitional Council Head Abdel Fattah al Burhan.
“I want to just congratulate all of you. The state of Israel and the Republic of Sudan have agreed to make peace. This is for many, many years they’ve been at odds, to put it nicely. And to normalize their relations, this will be the third country where we’re doing this and we have many, many more coming, they’re coming at us hot and heavy. In the coming weeks, they will meet to negotiate cooperation agreements – you saw that happen with the UAE and Bahrain recently. Agriculture, technology, aviation,’’ said Trump.
A joint statement said Israel and Sudan plan to begin by opening economic and trade relations, with an initial focus on agriculture.
”So, this is an agreement to normalise, that took place between Sudan and Israel and we are now waiting for the completion of the democratic institutions through the formation of the legislative council, so it can decide to ratify this agreement, and if this happens, then we will have begun the steps towards normalizing,” said Sudanese Foreign Minister Omar Gamareldin shortly after the announcement.
Sudan had earlier agreed to pay $335 million in compensation to victims of the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.
It will also pay for the Al Qaeda attack on the USS Cole, a guided-missile destroyer of the United States Navy, in Yemen in 2000, and the family of a murdered U.S. diplomat.
The payment paves way for the removal of the north African country from America’s list of state sponsors of terrorism.
Palestinians condemned the Sudan-Israel agreement saying Khartoum’s move was a step in the “wrong direction.”
“We are totally denouncing this deal and we are sure that the Sudanese people, intellectual Sudanese national parties, the people of Sudan also will reject these deals because Sudan and the people of Sudan, they have a fair stand with the Palestinian cause,” Majed Al-Fityani, the Secretary of the Revolutionary Council of the Fatah Movement.
Palestinian leaders have condemned recent Arab overtures to Israel as a betrayal of their nationalist cause and have refused to engage with the Trump administration, seeing it as biased in favor of Israel.
“No one has the right to speak in the name of the Palestinian people and in the name of the Palestinian cause,” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said in a statement.
