President Donald Trump speaks about a Sudan-Israel peace agreement in the Oval Office on October 23, 2020, in Washington, DC. He announced that Sudan will start to normalize ties with Israel. (Credit: Win McNamee, Getty Images)
US President Donald Trump announced a formalized peace accord between the State of Israel and the African nation of Sudan on Friday morning. The president published a copy of the joint statement on his Twitter account, the third such deal brokered by the Trump Administration between the Jewish State and a Muslim-majority Arab nation in less than three months, following the Gulf nations of UAE and Bahrain. The announcement of Sudan’s inclusion in the Abraham Accords has been highly anticipated for months, as the leadership of both nations have repeatedly signaled their interest. Trump also teased the probability of five other Arab nations joining the accord, naming Saudi Arabia. Many experts have also suggested that Morocco, Kuwait, Oman and Lebanon have unannounced talks underway with Israel.
The joint statement announced the end of “belligerence” between the two nations and the onset of diplomatic relations, outlining several priorities for economic and security cooperation, beginning with agriculture. Sudan is one of the poorest Arab nations in the world, and has been recently hard-hit in the capital of Khartoum by an unusually-high level of flooding over the banks of the Nile River. Egypt and Sudan have also been locked in an ongoing dispute with Ethiopia over the latter nation’s plans for the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which could potentially be used to restrict the flow of the Nile River to the downstream nations, making agriculture a top initiative.
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Israeli-Sudanese peace is especially significant, considering the legacy of Anti-Zionism (and many would say Anti-Semitism) in Sudan’s recent history. It was in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum that the Arab League members met in the wake of the Six-Day War with Israel in 1967, adopting the so-called “Three No’s” of the Khartoum Resolution: “No peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with it.” Sudan’s previous strongman, Omar al-Bashir, was outspoken in his hatred for Israel, and cooperated with the radical Iranian regime against the Jewish State in the region. Bashir also provided safe haven to Osama Bin-Laden and al-Qaeda in the 1990’s, during which time the infamous terrorist organization bombed the American embassies in the nearby African nations of Kenya and Tanzania, killing more than 200 people. Bashir then initiated a campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing in the non-Arab region of Darfur during a conflict with separatists there, leading to the indictment of Bashir and many leaders in his regime in the International Criminal Court (ICC). Today, from the same city in which the Khartoum Resolution was passed 53 years earlier, the leader of Sudan’s transitional government joined President Trump for a conference call with Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu and reversed the “three no’s” into “three yes’s.”
Despite Sudan’s achievement, it is still reeling from decades of corruption, graft and civil war which became the impetus for a popular uprising in 2018. The mostly-peaceful protest movement, considered to be another wave of the Arab Spring, led to the ouster of Omar al-Bashir from power and the establishment of a caretaker government, led by Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah Abdelrahman Burhan. The new government has worked hard bring Sudan out of the shadow of Omar al-Bashir, formalizing a peace agreement with rebel groups, agreeing to compensate the families of the 1998 embassy bombings, and now forging a new path of peace with an old enemy.
We are thankful for today’s announcement of another new peace initiative between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Although we know that very difficult times are ahead for the Jewish State and the region, we recognize the ultimate, divinely-ordained destiny for the Middle East will be one of peace between the descendants of Isaac and Ishmael, and we celebrate the Abraham Accords as a foretaste of that age. We would encourage our global family to continue to pray for the success of these ongoing peace talks, and for new doors to open for Good News as a result.
Maranatha.
