By Morgan Phillips | Fox News
President
Trump hangs ends the call with the leaders of Sudan and Israel, as Treasury
Secretary Steven Mnuchin, left, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, White House
senior adviser Jared Kushner, National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien, and
others applaud in the Oval Office of the White House, Friday, Oct. 23, 2020, in
Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
President Trump on Friday announced a peace deal that would normalize ties with between Israel and Sudan, claiming there "would be many more peace deals to come in the Middle East."
Sudan
is the third Arab state to do so as part of U.S.-brokered deals in the run-up
to Election Day.
Trump invited reporters into the Oval Office while he was
on the phone with the leaders of Israel and Sudan to discuss the latest
U.S.-brokered deal in the run-up to Election Day.
"Three months ago, no one thought this was possible.
Even Bibi didn't know if this was possible, right Bibi?" Trump asked his
ally, Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Trump said Sudan had demonstrated a commitment to
battling terrorism. "This is one of the great days in the history of
Sudan," Trump said, adding that Israel and Sudan have been in a state of
war for decades.
"It is a new world," Netanyahu said over the
phone. "We are cooperating with everyone. Building a better future for all
of us."
The president said that at least five other countries
wanted peace with Israel. "We have many lined up. They want to come in, get
the deal done."
Senior adviser to the president Jared Kushner, who has
been involved in brokering the deals, agreed that other countries in the Middle
East would soon follow suit.
Trump said that even Iran would "someday"
normalize relations with Israel.
"Iran ultimately will become a member of this whole
thing. Look, someday I'd love to help Iran get back on track. They've gone from
a rich country to a poor country in three years," he said.
"But they can't have nuclear weapons," he
continued. "It's always death to Israel, that's all they shout. So
they can't have nuclear weapons."
The president also said that a deal between Israel and
the Palestinian region may be on the horizon. "Palestinians, they're
wanting to do something. "I'm sure that will get done,
too."
Before the 2020 peace deals, Middle Eastern nation
had not recognized Israel since Jordan in the 1990s.
Trump said he expects Saudi Arabia to come to the
table for a deal soon.
"There's going to be a big reunion, where everybody
is here, everybody's going to be signed. We expect Saudi
Arabia's going to be one of those countries. Highly respected. The
King and the Crown Prince. They're all just highly respected in the Middle
East."
Friday's deal, which would deepen Sudan's engagement with
the West, follows Trump's conditional agreement this week to remove the North
African nation from the list of state sponsors of terrorism if it pays
compensation to American victims of terror attacks.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a ceremony
announcing the deal that victims of terror would receive $335 million in
compensation from Sudan.
The money is meant for victims of the 1998 bombings of
the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania by the al-Qaida network while its
leader, Osama bin Laden, was living in Sudan. Trump said on Tuesday that once
the funds were transferred, he would remove Sudan from the list.
A senior U.S. official said Sudan had borrowed the money
needed to pay that amount.
But these recent recognitions of Israel have undermined
the traditional Arab consensus that there can be no normalization with Israel
before the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. The Palestinians
say the recognitions amount to betrayal, while Israel says the Palestinians
have lost what they have seen as their "veto" over regional peace
efforts.
Netanyahu has made it a priority to forge ties with
formerly hostile countries in Africa and the Arab world in the absence of any
progress with the Palestinians during his more than a decade in office.
The deal with Sudan will include aid and investment from
Israel, particularly in technology and agriculture, along with further debt
relief. It comes as Sudan and its transitional government teeter on the edge.
Thousands have protested in the country's capital Khartoum and other regions in
recent days over dire economic conditions.
Trump said the deal "will enhance Israel's security
and end Sudan's isolation from the world."
The removal of the terror designation opens the door for
Sudan to get international loans and aid needed to revive its battered economy
and rescue the country's transition to democracy.
Sudan is on a fragile path to democracy after a popular
uprising last year led the military to overthrow the longtime autocrat, Omar
al-Bashir. A military-civilian government rules the country, with elections
possible in late 2022.
Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok thanked Trump for
signing the executive order to remove Sudan from the terrorism list and said in
a statement that he hoped to complete the process in a "timely
manner."
The normalization agreement had been in the works for
some time but was finalized when Trump's Mideast peace team, led by Jared
Kushner and Avi Berkowitz, visited the region earlier this week to mark the
first commercial flight between Israel and Bahrain and then went on to the
United Arab Emirates, according to U.S. officials.
Unlike with Bahrain and the UAE, there has been a state
of hostilities between Sudan and Israel, even if they had not been in direct
conflict.
Unmentioned in the joint statement was that Sudan has
agreed, according to the senior U.S. official, to designate Lebanon's Hezbollah
movement as a terrorist organization, something that Israel has long sought
from its neighbors and others in the international community.
The Associated Press contributed to this
report.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-sudan-to-join-uae-bahrain-in-recognizing-israel
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