Power Suits 8 April 2021
The Sudanese cabinet voted to abolish a law forbidding diplomatic and business relations with Israel on Tuesday, reversing six-decade long policy.
Declaring support for the moribund two-state solution is a routine cop-out used by Arab and European governments to deflect from their complicity and inaction as Israel continues to violently colonize Palestinian land.
The decision needs to be approved by Sudan’s sovereign council – its interim legislature – before it can go into effect.
The day before the Sudanese cabinet agreed to repeal the boycott law, Hamdok and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke on the phone.
State Department spokesperson Ned Price said the pair discussed US support for the “transitional government’s efforts to advance the peace process” – without specifying what that refers to.
Neither briefing on the phone call mentioned Israel.
During his confirmation hearings in January, Blinken heaped praise on the Trump administration’s efforts to secure normalization deals between Israel and various Arab states, despite Israel’s continued denial of Palestinian rights.
“I applaud the work that was done to push forward on normalization with Israel,” Blinken told senators.
“It makes Israel and the region safer. It’s a good thing, and yes, I would hope that we can build on that as well.”
“Heavy pressure”
Sudan’s transitional government agreed to establish full diplomatic relations with Israel last October, as part of a larger deal to bring it firmly into the American fold.
Formal treaties are expected once Sudan forms a permanent government, but Israeli officials have made visits to Khartoum in recent months.
US President Donald Trump announced at the time of the agreement that he would remove Sudan from the US list of state sponsors of terrorism in exchange for $335 million in compensation for American casualties of al-Qaeda attacks.
Blinken confirmed on 31 March the receipt of the funds from Sudan.
Blinken called the payment the beginning of “a new chapter” between the two countries.
While Blinken’s statement does not mention Israel, Sudan’s agreement to make the payment in exchange for its removal from the list has been perceived as a primary motivation for normalizing relations with Israel.
A Sudanese government spokesperson revealed last year that the country came under “heavy pressure” from the United States to normalize ties with Israel in exchange for Sudan’s removal from the US terrorism list.
“It was said clearly [that] this is linked,” Sudan’s information minister Faisal Mohamed Salih told Iran’s Press TV correspondent Ahmed Kaballo.
“‘If you want Sudan to be delisted from the [US list of state sponsors of terrorism], then you have to normalize the relationship with Israel.’ It was a very difficult situation,” he said.
There is little indication that the US strong-arming of Sudan has changed under Biden.
Intimidation and incentives
Sudan was one of four Arab states to agree to normalize relations with Israel during Trump’s last year as president.
The other three were the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco.
The Trump administration used a mix of intimidation and incentives to achieve some of these deals.
The Biden administration appears to be carrying the same torch.
Israeli journalist Barak Ravid reported that Mauritania was close to normalizing relations with Israel and that it had “hoped to get economic incentives in return,” but Trump left office before a deal was reached.
Ravid said the Biden administration hopes to broker similar normalization agreements “while securing achievements of its own through new deals.”
“Several of the newly established relationships between Israel and the four countries of the Abraham Accords are accelerating in their own right,” an unnamed US official told Ravid.
“The US will continue to encourage that dynamic.”
Mauritania previously established diplomatic relations with Israel in the 1990s, but broke them off in 2010 in protest of Israel’s attacks on Palestinians in Gaza.
Israeli media reported in February that Mauritania was slated to be one of the countries to receive COVID-19 vaccine doses from Israel as part of an effort by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to curry favor with governments around the world.
While those plans were suspended due to legal opposition, millions of Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation are still denied the vaccine.
Comments
mafia
Permalink Peter Purich replied on
Trump the Don and Pompeo the enforcer now we have the Great White Biden - the new Don - and Blinken the new enforcer. Same old Mafia. US is not "strong-arming" it is simply extortion. US and the illegitimate Zionist entity perfecting the art of extortion, assassination, human experimentation - you will love us (love??) or die. To love that abomination is death.
Sudan
Permalink Frank Dallas replied on
As ever what runs the show is US interests, which are still identified with oil. Nothing is going on here except the US securing its position through Israel, as it has done for decades. There is no move towards justice and the routine evocation of the two-States settlement is cynical. Nevertheless, Chomsky has a point: there is world-wide support for two States and virtually none for a single State; the idea of a single Jewish State and an anti-apartheid internal struggle leaves the option of Israel continuing as normal. Once Greater Israel is attained, the Palestinians will be confined, divided, unable to resist. A two-State agreement is better than that. And it's a beginning not an end. On the likely terms, it's unjust; but a just solution is going to take some getting to. The first step is two-States because that's what every significant world government claims to support. They can be pressured. They can be forced to stop hiding behind the rhetoric and to deliver the reality. The choice before us in this mess is not justice or oppression; it's a lesser injustice or greater oppression. If we dismiss two-States, we leave the field open for the kind of glib cynicism displayed here. But if we are the people pushing for two-State to be delivered, and soon, how can they get away with doing nothing, given it is their avowed policy? The current wave of "normalisation" is smoke and mirrors. It delivers nothing but greater US power and more arrogance from Netanyahu. It's our job to shatter that.
Normalization
Permalink Adrienne Weller replied on
Here is an article I wrote on the phony "peace" normalizations -- https://socialism.com/fs-artic...