17 Feb 2020; MEMO: For the first time, an Israeli plane has flown through the Sudanese airspace, Ynet News reported yesterday.
The plane had first taken off last Monday from Israel’s Tel Aviv for Congo’s capital city of Kinshasa, passing through Egypt’s Suez Canal, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda, spending a total of seven hours in the air. However, the same plane returned back at Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion airport through Central African Republic, Sudan and Egypt, spending only five hours and a half.
The move comes following a recent meeting between the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the President of Sudan’s Sovereignty Council, Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, in Uganda, where the agreed on allowing flights from and to Israel to use the Sudanese airspace.
“My meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was held without conditions and in coordination with the United States,” Burhan told reporters after the meeting, stressing that the joint talks between the two countries would “stop if there were no real results from both sides.”
“The picture for Sudan changed a lot after I met with Netanyahu,” the Sudanese leader said.
Israeli planes used to fly over Sudan in the past, with a condition that they had to stop in the Jordanian capital of Amman or another destination so that the flight would not be registered as Israeli. Last week’s plane did not have an Israeli license number, but it landed in Tel Aviv.
Israel’s relations with Arab countries have been strained for years over the latter’s decades-long occupation on Palestine. There has been never been any official relations between Israel and Arab countries, except for Egypt and Jordan, both of which are tied with two peace treaties with Israel.
The meeting also came amid escalated tensions between Israel and the Arab and Islamic world following the recently-released US Middle East peace plan.
The so-called “Deal of the Century” was also rejected by the United Nations (UN). It said the deal was not based along with UN guidelines but is an imposition of the American president Donald Trump’s own vision of a two-state solution. The deal was also condemned by all Palestinian parties.
