Pompeo: I Hope Sudan Will Recognize Israel ‘Quickly’

“Vast changes are coming because Israel is now a power to contend with, and because collaboration with Israel helps you prepare, secure the future of your people and ensure a better future for your people,” Netanyahu said.

By Aryeh Savir, TPS

The US has begun the process of lifting the designation of state sponsorship of terror from Sudan, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced, tying the process to the normalization of ties with Israel.

The US will remove Sudan from the US’ State Sponsors of Terrorism list, President Donald Trump announced earlier this week, after its government agreed to pay $335 million to US terror victims and their families.

Pompeo told reporters on Wednesday that “there’s been a lot of work done on this over the course of the first three years of the administration.  We believe there is a firm legal basis for doing that, and we think that there will be enormous bipartisan consensus that that’s the right to do.”

On the subject of Sudan’s expected normalization of ties with Israel, Pompeo stated that the US is “continuing to work to get every nation to recognize Israel, the rightful Jewish homeland, and to acknowledge their basic fundamental right to exist as a country. That certainly includes Sudan. And we are working diligently with them to make the case for why that’s in the Sudanese Government’s best interest to make that sovereign decision. We hope that they’ll do that. We hope that they’ll do that quickly. We hope every country will do that quickly.”

Sudan appears to be on way to full normalization of ties with Israel, weeks after the Jewish state and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain signed a peace treaty. An announcement on the historic development is expected within the coming two weeks, even before the elections in the US.

Israeli sources reported Wednesday that an Israeli executive jet took off from Ben Gurion Airport on a direct flight to Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, and returned to Israel the same day, an event described as “very unusual.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met in February in Uganda with Chairman of the Sovereignty Council of Sudan Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah al Burhan, a significant manifestation of the developing normalization between Israel and Arab and Muslim countries.

He also revealed that month that the first Israeli airplane passed over the skies of Sudan.

He explained that “vast changes are coming because Israel is now a power to contend with, and because collaboration with Israel helps you prepare, secure the future of your people and ensure a better future for your people. Securing the future, the safety of their people is obviously something on everyone’s mind, and the greatest threat to the security of the countries of the Middle East and countries in the world, is the attempt by Iran to arm itself with nuclear weapons.”

Israel and Sudan have reportedly maintained secrets ties in they have made much progress.

The establishment of formal relations between the countries has great potential for both in a variety of areas including security, economy, energy, agriculture and water.