Sudan and Israel .. the most prominent stations of normalization

Muzdalifah Muhammad Othman - Khartoum

“Please inform Omar that we are ready to have detailed technical discussions with him about the trade and money plan that has been discussed. The Governor of the Bank of Israel (David Horvitz) and (Israeli Prime Minister’s Adviser for Arab Affairs) Josh Palmon will be in Istanbul on the morning of September 13. Please contact the Consul Israeli, upon arrival, to arrange the meeting. Tell us when Omar is traveling to Istanbul. "

This was the text of an urgent telegram sent by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs on September 8, 1955 to its office in the Cypriot capital, Nicosia, to inform it to Sudanese politician Mohamed Ahmed Omar - who was there - for meetings with Israeli officials.

Muhammad Ahmad Omar appears in the Israeli archives exclusively as a link between him and Sudan before his independence, and he is considered a mysterious figure whom little is known about, but he was certainly the first Sudanese to initiate a relationship with Israel.

Omar is known in Sudan as the person who accompanied the head of the Umma Party, Al-Siddiq Al-Mahdi, on his visit to London in 1954, in which two secret meetings took place with the Israelis - without prior arrangement - to discuss any support that Israel could provide to support Sudan's independence and confront Egyptian influence.

These meetings with the Israelis were motivated by the frustration of the Umma Party because they believed that the issue of independence was in the wind as a result of the huge Egyptian machine that led to the victory of the current that supports unity with Egypt, and the representative in the Federal National Party led by Ismail Al-Azhari in the 1953 elections, in exchange for what they considered a failure and a failure Britain on supporting the independence current.

The first secretary at the Israeli embassy, ​​Mordechai Gazette, and others - according to the Israeli archive - said that Omar, in the first meeting that took place in the friend's Mahdi room in the Savoy Hotel in London, was the initiator of the conversation and raised points, and that the Mahdi believed in his words, which gave them the impression that Omar is Party spokesman.

In the meeting, Omar raised the demand of the Umma Party from Israel to support the cause of Sudan independence on the international stage, especially in the United States and the West and in the United Nations as well. Omar warned that any failure to support them would allow Egypt to engulf Sudan.

However, the Israeli archive documents indicated that the contacts between the Umma Party - specifically represented by the person of Muhammad Ahmed Omar - and Israel, continued until after the independence for which he knocked on the door of Israel.

Flash relay
In his turn, the former Sudanese President Jaafar Nimeiri is considered one of the printers with Israel when he agreed to transfer thousands of Flash Jews through Sudan and from there to Ethiopia to Israel, in a process that facilitated the settlement of about 25 thousand Jews in Palestine.

Since that time, it has not been known about any high-ranking Sudanese official who entered into direct meetings with Israel at any level, except for media leaks from time to time talking about unannounced meetings that took place in foreign capitals, most of which were interviewed in the negative.

Perhaps that is what made the meeting of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Chairman of the Sudanese Sovereignty Council, Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, in Uganda on Monday, a milestone in Sudanese history, ancient and modern.

The step taken by the proof, in the midst of the astonishment of the Sudanese, represented a realistic summation of the whisper that was going on from time to time about the required relations with Tel Aviv, offset by a strong rejection in the public statements of the Bashir regime.

The issue of rapprochement with Israel was raised in the National Dialogue Conference, which began its sessions in 2014 and lasted for about two years after the "Independents" party proposed normalizing the relationship with Israel, in the context of improving foreign relations and as a good entry to the American administration.

Not long after this controversy, everyone was surprised by the former foreign minister, Ibrahim Ghandour, who says that his country does not mind studying the possibility of normalization with Israel.

And before that, "WikiLeaks" leaks were talking that the former foreign minister and adviser to President Omar Hassan al-Bashir at the time, Mustafa Osman Ismail, said that his country's government is proposing to the United States aspects of cooperation that include the normalization of relations with Israel.

And the site quoted that Ismail mentioned in his meeting with the African Affairs Officer at the American State Alberto Fernandez, while he was in charge of the American charge d'affaires in Khartoum, that "if things go well with the United States, you may help us in facilitating things with Israel, your closest ally in the region ".

Voices in favor of normalization
With the exception of the secret leaks, voices in the Bashir government were rising from time to time and were in favor of normalization, among them the former White Nile governor Abdul Hamid Musa Kasha, who said in Parliament: "As long as we accepted America, let us accept Israel."

In the year 2012, Karmallah Abbas Abbas, the former governor of Gedaref State, cracked by belonging to a school in the National Congress (the ruling party at the time), calling for normalization with Israel.

He said that he would not hesitate to normalize Sudan's relations with Israel if he received the portfolio of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, referring to the relations of some Arab countries with Israel, including Egypt and Jordan.

The newspaper "Haaretz" wrote that in parallel with moving away from Iran and getting close to Saudi Arabia, a dialogue began about escalating in Sudan in the first months of the year 2016, regarding the possibility of normalizing relations with Israel.

She explained that a number of party leaders supported the possibility of changing the orientation of Israel and normalizing relations with it, as part of an attempt to rapprochement with the United States, in preparation for the removal of economic sanctions.

Secret envoy
In November of 2018, Israeli Channel 10 chief diplomatic correspondent Barak Rafid revealed that an Israeli envoy had secretly met senior Sudanese officials in Turkey a year ago.

Barak wrote a tweet on Twitter in which he said that the meeting took place in Istanbul between Israeli Foreign Envoy Bruce Kisdan and a Sudanese delegation headed by an aide to the former director of the former security apparatus, Mohamed Atta, mediated by a Turkish businessman close to Bashir, where the normalization of relations and aid in the field of economy, agriculture and health was discussed.

The Sudanese government spokesman, Minister of Information Bishara Arur, at that time, rushed to confirm that the frequent reports of a possible normalization of Sudanese-Israeli relations were incorrect. He said, "The hostility between Sudan and the State of Israel is ideological and religious, continuing until the hour is established."

The latest leak
In March 2019, the British Middle East Eye website reported that a secret meeting was held between Director of the Intelligence Agency Salah Abdullah Qosh and the Director of the Israeli Intelligence Agency Yossi Cohen in Munich, Germany, according to a senior source in the Sudanese army.

The source said that the meeting comes as a measure from "Israel's Gulf allies, as part of efforts to escalate Gosh to the presidency, after the removal of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir from power." Which was quick to deny the Sudanese intelligence service.

Now the Sudanese are awaiting the full explanation of President Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan for his meeting with Netanyahu, and he must give convincing justifications for strict religious currents that strongly oppose the idea of ​​rapprochement with Israel.