Sudan leader: Gov’t could normalize relations with Israel

APRIL 27, 2020 07:48

The head of Sudan’s Transitional Military Council, Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, talks to Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed during the signing of a power sharing deal in Khartoum, Sudan, August 17, 2019

BERLIN—The head of Sudan’s sovereignty council, Abdel-Fatah Al-Burhan, said on Sudanese TV on Saturday that the decision to normalize relations with the Israel is now a governmental executive decision.

Al-Burhan said the sovereignty council and the cabinet are “on full agreement on the importance of adopting the supreme interests of the country,” adding  “Sudan should not be in a state of hostility with any party, religion or sect …Sudan after the revolution is required to become different from what preceded it.”

The prominent Sudanese journalist Wasil Ali first tweeted English translations of al-Burhan’s remarks.

Al-Burhan noted that the outcomes of his meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are for the Sudanese government to decide.

Netanyahu met al-Burhan in a extraordinary February meeting of two countries that have never had diplomatic relation in Uganda. Netanyahu and Burhan met in Entebbe at the residence of Uganda’s president Yoweri Museveni.

Al-Burhan told a local paper at the time that he “felt comfortable” with the prime minister. Channel 12 cited an unnamed Sudanese paper that reported that al-Burham said: “A few days before I met with Netanyahu, I prayed to God. I asked him whether this was a good thing for Sudan. If so, I said I’d go. If not, ‘send me a sign.’ God gave me the feeling that I should go and meet with him,”

After the meeting with al-Burhan, Netanyahu announced in February that  Israeli commercial planes are flying over Sudan—a sign viewed as another breakthrough in Sudanese-Israeli relations. Khartoum said on Feb. 5 it had given Israeli planes initial approval to fly over Sudan, two days after the meeting.“Now we’re discussing rapid normalization. The first Israeli airplane passed yesterday over the skies of Sudan,” Netanyahu said.

The 59-year-old Lt. Gen. al-Burhan is a both a politician and  Army lieutenant general who is currently serving as Chairman of the sovereignty council, the country’s  transitional head of state as it moves to form a permanent government following the grassroots revolution that ousted Ahmad al-Bashir in 2019.

Commentators view the  thaw in Sudanese-Israeli relations as remarkable. Arab states gathered in 1967 in Sudan and issued the “Three No’s” against the Jewish state – no recognition of Israel, no peace with Israel and no negotiations with Israel .