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WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump announced Friday that Sudan will begin to normalize with Israel, becoming the third Arab state to do so under agreements negotiated across the United States before Election Day.
The announcement came after the North African country agreed to put $335 million in a security deposit account to compensate Americans who suffered terrorist attacks. The attacks result with the 1998 attacks on U. S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania via the al-Qaida network while its leader, Osama bin Laden, lived in Sudan. In return, Trump notified Congress Friday of its goal of removing Sudan from the U. S. list of terrorist-sponsoring states.
It’s a foreign policy achievement for Trump just 11 days before Election Day. Previously, the Trump administration devised diplomatic pacts between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, the first since Jordan identified Israel in the 1990s and Egypt in the 1970s.
Trump said at least five other countries sought to conclude the deal, which together is called Abraham’s Agreements.
Israel’s new recognitions unscreote Arab nations around its unusual enemy, Iran. They also disappointed the classic Arab strategy of refusing to normalize relations with Israel before the creation of an independent Palestinian state.
Palestinians say recognitions amount to treason.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned and rejected the agreement, saying that lasting peace in the region depends on ending the Israeli profession and creating a Palestinian state. Wasel Abu Yousef, a senior Palestinian official, called the agreement a “backs stabbed” by the other Palestinian people and their cause. The Islamic militant organization Hamas, which runs Gaza, also condemned the agreement.
Israel acknowledged that the Palestinians had lost their “veto” over regional peace efforts.
Trump invited reporters to the Oval Office while still talking on the phone with Israeli and Sudanese leaders, and said Sudan has demonstrated its commitment to combating terrorism.
“This is one of the wonderful days in Sudan’s history,” Trump said, adding that Israel and Sudan had been in a state of hostility for decades, even though they had not been in direct conflict.
At a broadcast in Jerusalem, Netanyahu noted that in 1967 Khartoum hosted a convention in which the Arab League called for non-recognition, negotiation or peace with Israel.
“Today, Khartoum says yes to peace with Israel, yes to Israel’s popularity and yes to normalization with Israel,” Netanyahu said. Three in the last few weeks. “
He said Israeli and Sudanese groups will meet soon to discuss cooperation in agriculture, industry and other fields. Sudan is also opening its skies to Israeli flights, which will shorten to Africa and South America, he said.
At a separate but similar event, Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz announced that Israel had consented to the sale of “advanced weapons” by the United States to the United Arab Emirates. Arms sales were part of the deal the United States had negotiated in the past between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.
Gantz and Netanyahu said Defense Secretary Mark Esper trusted Israel that the United States would gain the qualitative advantage of Israel’s military. Israel is lately the only country in the Middle East that has complex fighter jets. Gantz’s workplace refused to identify the weapons, but Trump said the UAE was interested in buying F35 fighter jets.
The elimination of the appointment of terrorism opens the door for Sudan’s fragile transitional government to discharge foreign loans and assistance to revive its suffering economy and save the country’s transition to democracy. A senior U. S. official said Sudan had borrowed the cash needed to open the receiving account of victims of terrorism.
Sudan is on a fragile path to democracy after a popular uprising last year led the army to overthrow autocrat Omar al-Bashir. Thousands of people have manifested themselves in recent days in the country’s capital, Khartoum, and in other regions, in a desperate economic situation.
Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok thanked Trump for signing the executive order to remove Sudan from the terrorism list and said he hoped to conclude the deal “at the right time. “
It is not disputed as a whole that Sudan has agreed, according to the senior US official, to designate the Lebanese Hezbollah motion as a terrorist organization, which Israel has long expected from its neighbors and other members of the international community.
However, not everyone in Sudan is satisfied to recognize Israel. Some Islamist politicians, who were overthrown after the dismissal of autocrat Omar al-Bashir, said they were expecting renewed public support.
“I hope anger. I await protests,” said Mohammed El Hassan, one of the leaders of the dissolved al-Bashir National Congress party. “As Muslims, we support the Palestinians. It’s the role of governments in making such decisions. “
But others say that standardization is the value in getting Sudan off the US terrorism list.
“Because of the economy, Sudanese do not see this as a generalization with Israel, but as a generalization with the foreign community,” said Osman Mirgany, a prominent Sudanese columnist and editor-in-chief of al-Tayar. isolation, we need general relationships. “
The standardization agreement had been in the process for some time, but was finalized when Trump’s Middle East peace team, led by Trump son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner, and Avi Berkowitz, the president’s assistant and special representative for foreign negotiations, visited the region. . to mark the first advertising flight between Israel and Bahrain, then traveled to the United Arab Emirates, according to U. S. officials.
Officials were not legal to discuss the announcement and spoke only on condition of anonymity.
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Associated Press editors Jonathan Lemire in Washington, Josef Federman in Jerusalem and Isabel DeBre in Dubai contributed to the report.
Deb Riechmann and Matthew Lee, Associated Press