February 02, 2023, Khartoum: Sudan said it agreed to “move forward” towards normalizing relations with Israel during talks with visiting Foreign Minister Eli Cohen in Khartoum. The trip to Khartoum on Thursday was part of an exchange of visits between Sudan and Israel. They include discussing reaching and signing a normalization agreement and military and security issues.
“It has been agreed to move forward towards the normalization of relations between the two countries,” the Sudanese foreign ministry said following a meeting between Cohen and his Sudanese counterpart Ali al-Sadiq.
Thursday’s talks touched briefly on “achieving stability and peace between Israel and the Palestinians,” the Sudanese statement said without elaborating. Discussions also included “ways to establish fruitful relations” between the two countries and “prospects of cooperation” in security, agriculture, energy, health, water and education, according to a statement by Sudan’s sovereign council.
Sudan’s military, which has been in charge of the country since an October 2021 coup but says it intends to hand over power to a civilian government, is seen as having led the move towards establishing relations with Israel.
Civilian groups have been more reluctant and said any deal must be ratified by a transitional parliament yet to be formed.
Two-state solution:
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who returned to power late last year as the head of the most right-wing government in the country’s history, has made broadening Israeli ties across the Arab and Muslim world a foreign policy priority. Netanyahu has repeatedly expressed his desire to see Saudi Arabia join the Abraham Accords.
The kingdom’s top diplomat said last month it would not normalize ties with Israel in the absence of a two-state solution with the Palestinians. On Thursday, Chadian President Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno opened his majority-Muslim country’s embassy in Israel, four years after the countries renewed ties following a decades-long rupture. Netanyahu’s office, in a statement, called the embassy’s inauguration in Ramat Gan near Tel Aviv “a historic moment.”
