Will Sudan join Abraham Accords for normalization with Israel?

Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen arrived in Khartoum on an unannounced visit on Thursday, February 2, during which he met with the head of the Sudanese Sovereignty Council, Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan.

Cohen was accompanied by a delegation that included Director General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Ronen Levy, Deputy Director of the Africa Division of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Sharon Bar-Li, representative of the Agency for International Development Cooperation in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Einat Shlain, and legal advisor at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Tal Becker, along with senior officers in the Mossad and Israeli military intelligence.

The two sides held two talks at the army headquarters. The first was with the Burhan, in the presence of Sudanese Foreign Minister Ali Al-Sadiq, where they agreed to continue the steps of normalization and Sudan’s signing of the Abraham Accords after the success of the ongoing political process in Khartoum and the formation of the civil government.

The two parties also agreed to transform the memorandum of understanding signed between the two sides into executable cooperation projects in the fields of energy, agriculture, water, health and education.

In the second session, the Sudanese Minister of Defense, the Director General of the Intelligence Service, and the Director of Military Intelligence participated from the Sudanese side, where they discussed expanding security and military cooperation with Israel, facing the challenges of both sides, and the tensions on the borders between Sudan, Chad and Central Africa, in addition to the issues of the African Sahel and the Red Sea.

In a statement quoted from the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs website, Cohen said, “Today's visit to Sudan lays the foundations for a historic peace agreement with a strategic Arab and Muslim country. The peace agreement between Israel and Sudan will promote regional stability and contribute to the national security of the State of Israel.”

The visit came amid a heated political climate in Sudan, which is witnessing division among civilians and the military.

Political scene

Civilians in Sudan were divided over the Framework Agreement signed by political forces, led by the Forces for Freedom and Change - Central Council and the military component, last December with the aim of ending the October 2021 coup and restoring civilian rule. The agreement was welcomed internationally and regionally by the UN mission in Sudan (UNITAMS), the African Union, and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), in addition to the United States, European Union, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE.

Other factions boycotted the Framework Agreement, led by the Forces for Freedom and Change - Democratic Bloc, which includes armed movements that signed the Juba Peace Agreement, in addition to tribal leaders and other political forces. These factions are currently in Egypt, where negotiations are taking place under the auspices of the Egyptian government and intelligence.

On the military side, disputes have recently surfaced between the head of the Military Council and Commander-in-Chief of the Sudanese Army, Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, and his deputy in the Sovereignty Council and Commander of the Rapid Support Forces, General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo “Hemedti”, due to local and international competition over gold mines in the tri-border between Sudan, Chad and Central Africa, in addition to other internal affairs.

Commentators believe that the Israeli delegation came to strengthen the side of Burhan, an ally of Washington, against Hemedti, an ally of Russia and its security arm in Africa, the Wagner Group.

According to the official website of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the visit took place with the approval of the United States, as the two “parties finalized the text of the agreement. The signing ceremony is expected to take place in Washington after the transfer of power in Sudan to a civilian government that will be established as part of the ongoing transition process in the country.”

Background

Burhan had met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Entebbe, Uganda, in February 2020, and they agreed to start a dialogue in order to “normalize relations” between the two countries.

At the time, Netanyahu described the meeting as historic and an “extraordinary transformation.” Sudan was one of the Arab countries that had waged wars against Israel, and Khartoum hosted the meetings of the Arab League on August 29, 1967, against the backdrop of the 1967 Setback, in which what was known as the three “No’s” was approved: No peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, and no negotiations with Israel.

In October 2020, the Israeli-Sudanese normalization agreement was announced, making Sudan the fifth member state of the Arab League to sign a peace agreement with Israel, following Egypt, Jordan, the UAE and Bahrain. The Sudanese normalization agreement came on the same day that then-US President Donald Trump signed the removal of Sudan from the terrorism list.

Local reactions

The Sudanese were divided regarding normalization with Israel, both at the level of the elite and the masses, which is natural if we take into account Sudan’s cultural, religious and ideological diversity.

After the 2020 Entebbe meeting between Burhan and Netanyahu, the Sudanese Council of Ministers held an emergency session to discuss the meeting. The official spokesperson for the Government of Sudan at the time, then-Sudanese Minister of Culture and Information Faisal Mohamed Salih, said that he had no information about the details of the meeting, stressing that the government learned of the meeting from the media.

However, observers believe that normalization was part of the agreement between the government of former Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok and the Trump administration in return for removing Sudan from the list of countries sponsoring terrorism, structuring and canceling the debts of the World Bank, and thus Sudan's entitlement to debt from international institutions. These are matters that Hamdok's administration considered its most important achievement.

Also, the Minister of Justice in Hamdok's government, Nasreddin Abdel Bari, defended against critics of normalization with Israel, who view that the government is transitional and is not authorized to decide on an issue that requires an elected government. Abdel Bari said, “The transitional government is authorized, according to the Constitutional Document, to manage foreign policy in a balanced and independent manner, and in accordance with the interests of the Sudanese.”

Many Sudanese parties with diverse ideological backgrounds agreed in rejecting the normalization, such as the Association of Islamic Scholars and the National Umma Party led by late Al-Sadiq al-Mahdi, which is considered to be to the right of center, in addition to left-wing parties such as the Sudanese Communist Party and the Arab Baath Party, as well as other Arab nationalist parties. Revolutionary forces, represented by the Resistance Committees, also marched processions of solidarity with the Palestinian people.

On the other hand, there are many affiliates and supporters of the armed movements that fought the Omar al-Bashir government who are supporting and even calling for the normalization of relations with Israel. The matter can be traced back to the fact that the regime in Khartoum was adopting an ideology that practiced forced Islamization and Arabization against the African components. Also, there are quite a few who have sought refuge in Israel to escape the massacres and extermination in Darfur, while the armed movements themselves have some ties with Israel.