Israel expects to fully normalize ties with Sudan sometime later this year, Israel’s foreign minister said Thursday, after returning from a lightning diplomatic mission to the Sudanese capital.
Eli Cohen spoke to reporters after a one-day trip to Khartoum that included high-level meetings with military leaders, including Sudan’s ruling general, Abdel-Fattah Burhan, who led a coup that overturned the country’s transitional government in 2021.
“The agreement is expected to be signed this year and it will be the fourth” such accord, Cohen said, referring to the U.S.-brokered normalization deals with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco in 2020.
The announcement could help Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu deflect attention from a recent burst of violence with Palestinians and widespread public anger over his plans to overhaul the country’s judicial system — which critics say will badly damage Israel’s democratic system of checks and balances.
For Sudan’s ruling generals, a breakthrough with Israel could help convince foreign countries, including the United States and the UAE, to inject financial aid into the struggling economy. Sudan remains mired in a political stalemate between a popular pro-democracy movement and the country’s powerful armed forces.
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