BICOM

What happened: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met yesterday with the visiting President Mahamat Déby of Chad to formalise the two countries’ official relations by consecrating the African state’s new Ramat Gan-based embassy.

• Netanyahu welcomed Déby by hailing the process as part of “Israel’s return to Africa and Africa’s return to Israel”. He noted: “We see these relations as extremely important—with a large country in the heart of Africa” and that “we have common goals of security, prosperity, and stability.”
• On arrival in Israel on Tuesday night, Déby was met by Mossad chief David Barnea. The two went on to a celebratory meeting at Mossad headquarters.
• In his own meeting with Déby, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant “raised the importance of narrowing the influence of Iran and Hezbollah in the Sahel region, as a key to ensuring stability, and thwarting the export of terrorism.”
• Déby also met with Foreign Minister Eli Cohen, with the two discussing Israel’s humanitarian work in Chad, including the Mashav programme which trains Chadian medics in emergency and trauma care.
• In a further step towards normalisation with a Muslim-majority African state, Foreign Minister Eli Cohen met with Sudanese leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan in Khartoum yesterday, and confirmed on his return that a full peace treaty was scheduled to be signed by the end of the year, once Sudan has transitioned from a military to a civilian regime.
• “Today’s visit… lays the foundations for a historic peace agreement with a strategic Arab and Muslim country” and “will promote regional stability and contribute to the national security of the State of Israel,” Cohen said.

Context: The Chadian and Sudanese moves represent a success for Netanyahu’s longstanding campaign for improved relations with both Muslim-majority and African states.

• In 2016, Netanyahu became the first Israeli Prime Minister to make a diplomatic trip to Africa in decades, as he visited Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda and Ethiopia. Later that year, Israel hosted senior ministers and officials from 13 West African states for a conference on agriculture.
• In July 2021, former Chadian Prime Minister Moussa Faki Mahamat invited Israel to hold member status at the African Union, a move later revoked in a campaign led by Algeria and South Africa.
• Both Netanyahu and Déby paid tribute to the latter’s father, Idriss Déby Into, who ruled Chad for more than thirty years before being killed fighting rebels in 2021.
• The elder Déby had initiated the move to fully normalise Chadian relations with Israel in 2019, following decades of clandestine cooperation but official distance. In November 2018, he paid a surprise visit to Israel.
• As one of the more militarily powerful members of the G5S states (Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger), Chad bears much of the burden in stemming terrorism in the sub-Saharan Sahel region- a role for which it has sought Israeli support.
• In 2018, Morocco (which normalised relations with Israel with the Abraham Accords in 2020) cut diplomatic ties with Iran, accusing it of using Hezbollah forces in the Sahel to support the Polisario Front group which fights an armed struggle for an independent Western Sahara.
• Israel has no embassy in Chad, and it remains to seen if this will change or if relations will continue to be handled by Ben Bourgel, Israel’s ambassador in Senegal, who presented his diplomatic credentials to Déby last year and whose brief also includes Guinea and The Gambia.
• In addition to cooperation on security, trade, and agriculture, as well as support in international bodies, normalisation with Chad would provide the potential for use of its airspace and ground facilities. This would allow flight times between Israel and South America to be reduced by several hours.
• Channel 12, meanwhile, reports a likely connection between the Chadian and Sudanese processes, with al-Burhan and his deputy, Mohamed Hamdan Daklo, having visited Chad earlier this week.
• The Sudanese move to resume the normalisation process follows its suspension after a military coup removed the previous regime in 2021.
• Sudan became the fourth state to sign normalisation agreements with Israel in October 2020, as part of the Abraham Accords and in return for removal from the US list of state sponsors of terrorism.
• In May 2022, in the wake of the coup, the Biden Administration announced that it was cancelling aid to Sudan, including that related to the Abraham Accords.
• Despite this move, the current process to finalise normalisation upon Sudan’s transition to a civilian regime appears to have been encouraged by the US, and a subject of discussion during Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s recent visit to Israel.
• Cohen previously visited Sudan in January 2021, when intelligence minister in the Netanyahu-Gantz government, while Israeli-Sudanese relations has been a key project for Ronen Levy (codenamed Maoz), the new Director General of the Foreign Ministry.
• Cohen noted that the peace deal with Sudan would allows Sudanese residents of Israel to return to the country.
• Sudan was, for decades, a key part of the wider Muslim world’s hostility to Israel. In 1967, it hosted the Arab League’s notorious Khartoum Conference at which the “three nos” – to peace, to recognition, and to negotiation – were adopted.
• From the late 1970s, it became a refuge for Palestinian militants and a sponsor of Palestinian terror, particularly Hamas. In 2012, Israel carried out a missile strike on a Khartoum weapons factory it alleged was supplying Palestinian groups.
• Between the late 1980s and the mid 2010s, Sudan also enjoyed warm relations with Iran. From 2014, however, it moved away from Tehran’s orbit and towards that of Iran’s enemy in Saudi Arabia.
• The fall of its long-time dictator Omar al-Bashir in 2019 saw fears that Iran might exploit the vacuum to reintroduce partnership, but such proved not to be the case, and normalisation will see Sudan join Chad in seeking mutual anti-terror cooperation with Israel.
• Both Chad and Sudan continue to face criticism for their human rights records.

Looking ahead: Israeli officials are briefing that the Chadian and Sudanese agreements might soon be followed by other normalisation deals with Mauritania and Indonesia.

• Netanyahu is likely to pursue the extension of the Abraham Accords to include other Middle Eastern states, with Saudi Arabia representing the ultimate prize.