Khartoum confirms: Halayeb is Sudanese .. What is the relationship of Israel?

But Abdel Azim ruled out - in his interview with the episode (10/30/2020) of the "Beyond the News" program - that the case of Halayeb and Shalateen had been raised in the recent negotiations with the United States and Israel.

Abdel-Azim added that the issue of Halayeb and Shalateen has been on the table for a long time within Sudanese politics, noting that the statements of the Sudanese Foreign Minister-designate came as part of his answer to a question in a press conference.

He explained that the Foreign Minister’s statement that this issue will not affect relations with Cairo indicates that his country will take legal steps to resolve the conflict, ruling out that the issue has been raised in discussions with Washington and Tel Aviv in order to pressure Cairo.

The Sudanese Foreign Minister-designate Omar Qamar al-Din had stated - as he put it in a loud voice - that the areas of Halayeb and Shalateen are Sudanese, and that his country will demand them without reaching the stage of severing diplomatic relations with Egypt.

In statements during a press conference, Qamar al-Din said that Sudan will demand more money in exchange for normalization with Israel, because Sudan is an expensive country, as he put it.

On the other hand, the Egyptian writer and political analyst Munir Adeeb considered that Sudanese officials used to make such statements when their popularity declined, noting that the ousted President Omar Al-Bashir had done so before with the decline in his popularity.

Adeeb explained that the popularity of those in charge of government in Sudan has greatly decreased due to normalization with Israel, describing these statements as populist.

Adeeb affirmed that Halayeb and Shalateen were, are, and will remain Egyptian according to international agreements signed with Britain to demarcate the borders with Sudan during Britain's occupation of Egypt and Sudan.

Adeeb explained that a confusion occurred on the Sudanese side based on the fact that the head of the Egyptian interior allowed the Sudanese tribes to enter the Halayeb and Shalateen area due to the existence of tribal relations with the Egyptians there, but Sudan considered - later - that it is Sudanese land.

Adeeb denounced that Israel is relying on the publication of maps showing Sudanese Halayeb and Shalateen, indicating that Israel was founded on the occupation of Palestine in 1948, which does not give it the right to talk about state borders, in addition to the fact that the Egyptian-Sudanese borders were drawn decades before the declaration of the State of Israel.

For his part, Cameron Hudson, senior researcher at the African Center at the Atlantic Council, said that Sudan is in a situation described as economically hopeless, considering that its agreement to normalize relations with Israel comes as an attempt to obtain economic support, despite Khartoum's talk that the normalization matter will take months before starting it.

Hudson ruled out the existence of a secret agenda for the Khartoum talks with Washington and Tel Aviv, which means that the Halayeb issue was not raised during these talks.

Hudson recalled that the head of the Sudanese Sovereignty Council, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, spoke about a month ago that Halayeb is a Sudanese land, considering that governance in Sudan is based on the military leaders taking a step and then civilians following them, as happened in the issue of normalization with Israel.