Officials say peace deal between Sudan and Israel is already at risk of unraveling
REPRESENTATIVES SAY SUDAN WILL EXIT THE U.S.-BROKERED ACCORDS IF CONGRESS REFUSES TO GIVE IT IMMUNITY FROM FUTURE
TERRORISM CLAIMS IN COURT.
A landmark agreement between Sudan and Israel to begin normalizing relations is at risk of unraveling just over a month after it was announced by President Donald Trump, revealing a crack in Middle East peace accords that he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel have sought to cement as foreign policy legacies.
Sudan was the third Arab state to agree to the Trumpbrokered Abraham accords that have opened new economic and diplomatic partnerships with Israel. The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed on to the accords in September and, as recently as last week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo predicted that other Sunni Muslim countries in the Middle East would soon follow.
Sudan reluctantly agreed to open relations with Israel — but only as part of a deal to be taken off a State Department list of state sponsors of terrorism — and wants Congress to approve legislation by year’s end that would protect it from terrorrelated lawsuits.
The new deadline, and recent negotiations between lawmakers and representatives of Sudan, were described to The New York
Times by five officials and other people familiar with the talks on the condition that they not be identified.
That it could imperil the rapprochement with Israel is the byproduct of what Ilan Goldenberg, director of the Middle East Security program at the Center for a
New American Security, described as rushed efforts by the Trump administration to score a foreign policy victory.
“The whole thing felt forced all along by an administration that wanted to use a terrorism designation as a political tool to try to get normalization with Israel,” Goldenberg said. “When you cook up these kinds of very transactional deals with unrelated items that don’t make much sense, this sometimes happens.”
Without the congressionally approved immunity, foreign investors may be reluctant to do business with Sudan. And without foreign investment, Sudan’s transitional government has little hope of pulling its country out of widespread poverty and instability.
Pompeo spoke Monday with Sudan’s de facto leader, Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, who made clear that the
East African nation would not move forward with warming ties with Israel before Congress passes the so-called legal peace legislation. But Congress has been deadlocked over the legislation, which essentially would block victims of past terror attacks from seeking new compensation from Sudan.