ISLAMABAD – Sudan is said to have opened its airspace to Israeli aircraftfor the first time, with a private Israeli jet using Sudanese airspace totravel from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to Tel Aviv, amid warmingties between the African country and the Israeli regime.
“The first Israeli airplane passed yesterday over the skies ofSudan,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in Jerusalem al-Qudson Sunday.
He said that Israel and Sudan were “discussing rapid normalization.”
An Israeli official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the planewas “a private Israeli executive jet,” not a flight with the Israeli “flagcarrier” El Al, according to the Associated Press.
Sudan’s leader, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who heads a ruling councilin the country, met with Netanyahu in Uganda earlier this month. Thatmeeting was made public only when the Israeli prime minister took toTwitter to claim that an agreement had been reached with Sudan to “begincooperation that will lead to the normalization of relations.”
Israel has no formal diplomatic relations with Sudan, where public andgovernment support for the Palestinian cause runs strong. The Khartoum-TelAviv relationship has also historically been hostile.
Burhan said back then that his country would now allow Israeli planes —with the exception of those operated by El Al — to fly over its territory.
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The meeting between Burhan and Netanyahu infuriated the Sudanese people andthe main Palestinian factions in the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip and theoccupied West Bank, namely Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the PalestineLiberation Organization (PLO).
Sudan has long been part of a decades-old Arab boycott of Israel over itstreatment of the Palestinians and its occupation of Arab lands.
In the wake of the Six-Day War of 1967, in which Israel occupied thePalestinian territories and seized the Golan Heights from Syria, Arableaders held a historic meeting in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, toannounce what would become known as the “three Nos” — no peace, norecognition, no negotiations with the occupying regime.
But the governments of those Arab countries have been increasinglyappeasing and warming up to Tel Aviv in the more recent past, Press TV hasreported.
