Haim Koren, Israel's former ambassador to Egypt and South Sudan, said the current normalization with Sudan closes a 64-year-old circle. "Sudan received its independence in 1956. At that time, the Mahdi party wanted to forge ties with Israel, but the Nasser regime, following the nationalization of the Suez Canal, was at its apex, and Sudan wavered on whether or not to join the wave of Nasser's pan-Arabism.
The Egyptian leader's charisma and influence in the Arab world swayed Sudan's leaders to opt for pan-Arabism. Sudan joined the Arab League. It became an integral part of the Nasserite movement, the height of which came at the infamous Khartoum Conference of September 1967 and the "Three Nos" resolution.
As an ally of Egypt, Sudan partook in the War of Attrition and Yom Kippur War, when it sent a brigade to the Egyptian front. One of the commanders of this brigade was an officer by the name of Omar al-Bashir, the recently deposed dictator of Sudan.
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Koren says that beyond their military significance, the strategic airstrikes in 2009 and 2012 – which foreign reports attributed to Israel and which destroyed a terror base and weapons convoy earmarked for the Gaza Strip via the Sinai Peninsula – were diplomatically important as well. The successful strikes nudged the Sudanese more toward the American-Saudi axis; and made it obvious to its rulers that their alliance with global terror – chiefly with Iran – was ruining them. Sudan was an important base of operations for al-Qaida, and the Sudanese government even armed al-Qaida terrorists with diplomatic passports. The sea-change in this regard is absolute. Sudan, where an American ambassador was murdered in 1973 under orders from Yasser Arafat, and where notorious terrorists Carlos the Jackal and Osama Bin-Laded found refuge, is now changing its colors.
The word "Sudan" means "black" in Arabic (bilad as-sudan means "Land of the Blacks"). Over hundreds of years, Sudan was infiltrated by Islam. Essentially, all of East Africa used to be called "Cush," which is traditionally considered the eponymous ancestor of the people of the "land of Cush," an ancient territory that is believed to have been located on either side or both sides of the Red Sea. As the centuries passed, three main population groups formed. Islam, in its flexibility, joined two of these groups together.
One group was the Arab Muslims in the fertile, wealthy northern part of Sudan, and the other was the Africans who were converted to Islam but to this day pass on the harsh memories of the days they were hunted by slave traders. Another group, in the southern part of Sudan, consists of black Christians who essentially formed the bridgehead for relations with Israel during the premiership of Golda Meir.
The relations that developed at that time formed complexities that are difficult to comprehend. On one hand, Israel sent Mossad agents led by David Ben Uziel ("Tarzan") to help the Christians in South Sudan defend themselves against genocidal campaigns. Jaafar Nimeiri, who recognized the autonomy of South Sudan in the early 1970s, permitted Ethiopian Jews to immigrate to Israel more than a decade later. He was also the only one in the Arab world who supported former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat when he made peace with Israel. Under Nimeiri's leadership of Sudan, however, an Islamist leader named Hassan al-Turabi rose to prominence. Al-Turabi pushed Sudan toward Islamism and an alliance with Iran immediately after the Khomenei-led Islamic Revolution in 1979.
"Turabi was among those who celebrated Sadat's murder, and his people later tried assassinating [former Egyptian President Hosni] Mubarak," Koren said, noting that a "process of Islamist radicalism had begun." This was the world of al-Bashir and al-Turabi up until 2011. They had a hand – beyond acts of genocide inside Sudan – in efforts to topple moderate Arab regimes. This period of time was disastrous for Sudan. "Bashir's successors, [Abdel Fattah] al-Burhan and [Abdalla] Hamdok, who seized power following the protests that ousted [al-Bashir], essentially followed a path he had set," according to Koren. "Bashir understood his situation was increasingly precarious, and the matter of establishing relations with Israel was part of the answer to this decline."
As early as three or four years ago, voices began emerging and articles began being written in favor of relations with Israel. The important point is that Arab nationalism, followed by the period of Islamism, didn't inculcate the Sudanese population with a hatred of Israel, contrary to countries in the Arab world. Egyptian society, to this day, is imbued with a deep, venomous anti-Semitism.
Swinging a gigantic, vast country (population of 42 million) such as Sudan, which sits on the Red Sea, is an extremely significant geopolitical move. The new Middle East is bustling with realignment in the face of Turkey's Ottoman ambitions and Iranian imperialism. For the first time, it appears the forces predicated on militaristic anti-Israel ideology are becoming isolated.
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