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Israeli airliner flies over Sudan for first time: Netanyahu
JERUSALEM, Feb 17, 2020 (BSS/AFP) – An Israeli airliner has flown
through Sudanese airspace for the first time, in what Prime Minister Benjamin
called another example of warming ties with formally hostile states.
Israel remains technically at war with Sudan, which supported hardline
Islamists — including, for a period, Al-Qaeda — during the rule of
president Omar al-Bashir.
Bashir was ousted by the army last April following months of mass anti-
government demonstrations.
“The first Israeli airplane passed yesterday over the skies of Sudan.
This is quite a change,” Netanyahu told American Jewish leaders in Jerusalem
on Sunday evening, without offering further details.
Netanyahu met Sudan’s leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan two weeks ago for
what the Israeli premier’s office described talks aimed at normalising ties.
A Sudanese government spokesman said later that Burhan “did not give a
promise of normalising or having diplomatic relations”.
Sudan has been part of a decades-old Arab boycott of Israel over its
treatment of the Palestinians and its occupation of Arab lands.
In the wake of the Six-Day War of 1967 in which Israel occupied the
Palestinian territories and seized the Golan Heights from Syria, Arab leaders
gathered in Khartoum to announce what became known as the “three nos”: no
peace, no recognition and no negotiations with Israel.
Netanyahu said Sunday that visible signs of a thaw in relations with
Sudan and other Muslim-majority countries were only the tip of the diplomatic
iceberg.
“How much is above the surface in an iceberg? It’s about 10 percent, he
said. “What you’re seeing is about 10 percent. Vast changes are coming.”
Gulf Arab countries have made a number of recent moves hinting at warmer
ties with the Jewish state, prompted largely by a shared enmity towards Iran.
Netanyahu visited Oman in 2018 and he frequently says the boycott of his
country is ending, despite the absence of a peace deal with the Palestinians.
Egypt and Jordan are so far the only Arab states to have full diplomatic
relations with Israel.
Netanyahu was speaking two weeks ahead of a March general election, the
third in 12 months. He has twice failed to form a government after
inconclusive polls.
BSS/AFP/MSY/1333 hrs