Sudan and Israel agreed Friday to normalize relations, in a US-brokered deal to end decades of hostility that was widely welcomed but stirred Palestinian anger.
The announcement makes Sudan, technically at war with Israel since its 1948 foundation, the fifth Arab country to forge diplomatic relations with the Jewish state.
Here is how international reaction:
Egypt
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, whose country in 1979 became the first Arab state to make peace with Israel before Jordan also signed a peace treaty in 1994, swiftly hailed the agreement.
“I welcome the joint efforts by the United States of America, Sudan and Israel regarding the normalization of relations between Sudan and Israel,” Sisi wrote in a tweet.
“I value all efforts aimed at achieving regional stability and peace.”
United States
“HUGE win today for the United States and for peace in the world,” tweeted US President Donald Trump, who faces a November 3 election in which he is trailing in the polls, announcing the deal ahead of Sudan and Israel.
“Sudan has agreed to a peace and normalization agreement with Israel! With the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, that’s THREE Arab countries to have done so in only a matter of weeks. More will follow!”
Israel
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it was an “amazing turnabout”.
“Today Khartoum says yes to peace with Israel, yes to recognition of Israel and yes to normalization with Israel,” he said in a Hebrew-language statement sent to AFP.
Sudan
State television in Sudan, which went to war against the Jewish state in 1948 and 1967, after which it hosted the “Three No’s” Arab summit — no peace, no recognition, no negotiations with Israel — said the deal aimed “to end the state of aggression”.
Palestinians
Palestinian leaders strongly condemned the deal, echoing their rejection of Israel’s normalization accords with the UAE and Bahrain signed in Washington last month.
“The State of Palestine expressed today its condemnation and rejection of the deal to normalize ties with the Israeli occupation country which usurps Palestinian land,” Mahmoud Abbas‘s office said in a statement.
“No one has the right to speak on behalf of the Palestinian people and the Palestinian cause,” it said.
The Islamist movement Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, said the deal was a “political sin” that benefitted only the Israeli premier.
The accord “harms our Palestinian people and their just cause, and even harms the Sudanese national interests,” it said in a statement.
“It benefits only Netanyahu.”
Israel’s agreements with Bahrain and the UAE broke with longstanding Arab policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and were condemned by the Palestinians as a “betrayal”.
