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Sudanese-Israeli Relations: From Secret Beginnings to a Public End

Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the head of Sudan’s Sovereign Council, reportedly met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Uganda on February 3, 2020 (AFP)
Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the head of Sudan’s Sovereign Council, reportedly met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Uganda on February 3, 2020 (AFP)
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Sudanese-Israeli Relations: From Secret Beginnings to a Public End

Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the head of Sudan’s Sovereign Council, reportedly met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Uganda on February 3, 2020 (AFP)
Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the head of Sudan’s Sovereign Council, reportedly met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Uganda on February 3, 2020 (AFP)

The meeting between Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, Chairman of the Sovereign Council of Sudan, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Uganda two days ago made the relations between the countries public, adding Sudan to the list of countries in contact with Israel.

These secret Sudanese-Israeli relations go back to the beginning of the 1980s when secret meetings took place between former President Gaafar Muhammad Nimeiry and former Defense Minister Ariel Sharon through an Arab mediator. These meetings later paved the way for the deportation of Falasha (Ethiopian Jews) to Tel Aviv.

After the international press revealed the meeting, Nimeiry asked Israel and the US to stop the operation and not to disclose his role in smuggling Falasha Jews. The US, however, started to put pressure Nimeiry in 1985 during a visit by US Vice President George Bush to Khartoum meant to resume the smuggling operation, famously known as the “Saba” operation. Nimeiry succumbed to the pressure on the condition that they are transported to European countries, including Israel.

Sharon recalls in his memoirs that the first meeting with Nimeiry took place during the funeral service of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in Cairo. He was there as part of an Israeli delegation to give condolences.

Sharon said: “I met with Nimeiry for the second time in 1982 to discuss strategic issues that concern Africa. The meeting was arranged by a former Israeli officer in the intelligence services, Yaacob Namrud, and an Arab businessman”. He then added that “I discussed with Nimeiry another issue that was of paramount importance to Sudan and Israel,” hinting at the issue of transporting Falasha Jews to Israel.

The secret communications between Israel and Sudan were discontinued after Nimeiry’s regime was overthrown by the popular revolution in 1985. The Sudanese officials in the security services and the regime were persecuted for taking part in this transportation of the Falasha.

Ousted President Omar al-Bashir maintained public hostility to Israel, considering his extremist Islamic ideology, and joined the camp of countries that are opposed to Israel in the region. This case of normalization of relations with Israel remained present during the marathon negotiations that took place between the overthrown regime and the CIA regarding fighting terrorism after the September 11 attacks.

Reliable sources indicate that one of the conditions that the US kept putting on the table during negotiations with Sudan to remove it from the terrorism list and ending economic sanctions was taking a favorable position towards Israel. This was not rejected by Sudanese negotiators.

Under heavy US pressure and increasing international isolation, the ousted regime responded by cutting relations with Iran and ceasing all support of Hamas, a position that is favorable for Israel. Observers have found that in recent years, the regime has sent positive signs to Israel, expressed by the former Foreign Minister Ibrahim Ghandour, who did not dismiss the possibility of discussing normalizing relations with Israel during discussions with the US over removing the sanctions.

Wikileaks released a conversation with the advisor to the overthrown president, Mostafa Osman Ismail, where he pushed for Washington’s suggestion to normalize ties with Israel as a condition for restoring relations with the US.

Mubarak al Fadil al Mahdi, the Minister of Investment in the last government formation under Bashir before it was overthrown, publicly stated his support of diplomatic relations between Israel and Sudan. He said: “The Sudanese do not find relations with Israel problematic.”

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Trump Carves Up World and International Order with It

Analysts say talks to end the war in Ukraine 'could resemble a new Yalta'. TASS/AFP
Analysts say talks to end the war in Ukraine 'could resemble a new Yalta'. TASS/AFP
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Trump Carves Up World and International Order with It

Analysts say talks to end the war in Ukraine 'could resemble a new Yalta'. TASS/AFP
Analysts say talks to end the war in Ukraine 'could resemble a new Yalta'. TASS/AFP

By casting doubt on the world order, Donald Trump risks dragging the globe back into an era where great powers impose their imperial will on the weak, analysts warn.
Russia wants Ukraine, China demands Taiwan and now the US president seems to be following suit, whether by coveting Canada as the "51st US state", insisting "we've got to have" Greenland or kicking Chinese interests out of the Panama Canal.
Where the United States once defended state sovereignty and international law, Trump's disregard for his neighbors' borders and expansionist ambitions mark a return to the days when the world was carved up into spheres of influence.
As recently as Wednesday, US defense secretary Pete Hegseth floated the idea of an American military base to secure the Panama Canal, a strategic waterway controlled by the United States until 1999 which Trump's administration has vowed to "take back".
Hegseth's comments came nearly 35 years after the United States invaded to topple Panama's dictator Manuel Noriega, harking back to when successive US administrations viewed Latin America as "America's backyard".
"The Trump 2.0 administration is largely accepting the familiar great power claim to 'spheres of influence'," Professor Gregory O. Hall, of the University of Kentucky, told AFP.
Indian diplomat Jawed Ashraf warned that by "speaking openly about Greenland, Canada, Panama Canal", "the new administration may have accelerated the slide" towards a return to great power domination.
The empire strikes back
Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has posed as the custodian of an international order "based on the ideas of countries' equal sovereignty and territorial integrity", said American researcher Jeffrey Mankoff, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
But those principles run counter to how Russia and China see their own interests, according to the author of "Empires of Eurasia: how imperial legacies shape international security".
Both countries are "themselves products of empires and continue to function in many ways like empires", seeking to throw their weight around for reasons of prestige, power or protection, Mankoff said.
That is not to say that spheres of influence disappeared with the fall of the Soviet Union.
"Even then, the US and Western allies sought to expand their sphere of influence eastward into what was the erstwhile Soviet and then the Russian sphere of influence," Ashraf, a former adviser to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, pointed out.
But until the return of Trump, the United States exploited its position as the "policeman of the world" to ward off imperial ambitions while pushing its own interests.
Now that Trump appears to view the cost of upholding a rules-based order challenged by its rivals and increasingly criticized in the rest of the world as too expensive, the United States is contributing to the cracks in the facade with Russia and China's help.
And as the international order weakens, the great powers "see opportunities to once again behave in an imperial way", said Mankoff.
Yalta yet again
As at Yalta in 1945, when the United States and the Soviet Union divided the post-World War II world between their respective zones of influence, Washington, Beijing and Moscow could again agree to carve up the globe anew.
"Improved ties between the United States and its great-power rivals, Russia and China, appear to be imminent," Derek Grossman, of the United States' RAND Corporation think tank, said in March.
But the haggling over who gets dominance over what and where would likely come at the expense of other countries.
"Today's major powers are seeking to negotiate a new global order primarily with each other," Monica Toft, professor of international relations at Tufts University in Massachusets wrote in the journal Foreign Affairs.
"In a scenario in which the United States, China, and Russia all agree that they have a vital interest in avoiding a nuclear war, acknowledging each other's spheres of influence can serve as a mechanism to deter escalation," Toft said.
If that were the case, "negotiations to end the war in Ukraine could resemble a new Yalta", she added.
Yet the thought of a Ukraine deemed by Trump to be in Russia's sphere is likely to send shivers down the spines of many in Europe -- not least in Ukraine itself.
"The success or failure of Ukraine to defend its sovereignty is going to have a lot of impact in terms of what the global system ends up looking like a generation from now," Mankoff said.
"So it's important for countries that have the ability and want to uphold an anti-imperial version of international order to assist Ukraine," he added -- pointing the finger at Europe.
"In Trump's world, Europeans need their own sphere of influence," said Rym Momtaz, a researcher at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace.
"For former imperial powers, Europeans seem strangely on the backfoot as nineteenth century spheres of influence come back as the organising principle of global affairs."