On 1^st September 1967, less than three months after Israel’s stunning victory in June of that momentous year, Arab leaders, including Gamal Abdel-Nasser, gathered for a summit in Khartoum. The decisions made there became known as the “three noes”: no peace, no negotiations, no recognition of the Jewish state.

 Fast forward 53 years, and Sudan has now become the third Arab state to announce an end to its “state of belligerence” with Israel. It follows the recent decision of the UAE and Bahrain to sign the Abraham Accords and normalise their relations. Before that it was 26 years since Jordan did the same in 1994. The first to break the long-standing taboo was Egypt in 1979.

 Sudan is in a different category from the two Gulf states – especially the wealthy and regionally assertive UAE. It is the one of the poorest countries in the Arab world and facing a severe economic crisis. It was motivated by the promise of being eligible for international loans and debt relief by its removal from the US list of state sponsors of terrorism dating back to the presence of Osama bin Laden in the mid-1990s.

 The statement about future relations with Israel includes the promise of agricultural and health cooperation, in which Israel is considered a world leader.

 President Donald Trump clearly had his own motives – making the attention-grabbing announcement last Friday, 11 days before the US election - which the latest polls predict he will lose to Joe Biden. Trump’s many critics dismissed it as a “campaign stunt” and “extortion”. The Israeli prime minister is also facing widespread protests because of his bungled handling of the covid pandemic as well as long-standing corruption allegations.

 But whatever the motives of the principal players, what matters is the rapidly evolving big picture of what used to be called the Arab-Israeli conflict but which, in the view of both Palestinians and Israeli commentators, no longer even exists.

 Clandestine or even discreet relations between Israel and Arab states, especially in the Gulf, have become widely known in the past 15 years. In the case of Sudan they date back even further. Jaafar al-Numeiri supported Anwar Sadat’s peace initiative in 1977 and played an important role in facilitating the arrival of Ethiopian Jews in Israel in the mid-1980s.

 Netanyahu has long boasted about these increasing “below the surface” links. In October 2018 he visited Muscat to see Sultan Qaboos and was accompanied by the head of the Mossad secret service – presumably intended as a message to Iran about secret regional connections. The same is true of Morocco, in that case dating back as far as the 1950’s.

 The deal with Sudan, agreed by the fragile transitional government in Khartoum, has potentially serious domestic implications. Following the overthrow of Omar al-Bashir in April 2019 after three decades in power, an agreement was reached between the military junta that deposed him and the civil movement that led mass protests. The change towards Israel was reflected in a meeting held by the head of the Provisional Sovereignty Council, General Abdel-Fatah Burhan, with Netanyahu in Uganda in February this year.

 But it already shows signs of being a controversial move whose final outcome cannot be taken for granted. Under the military is a civilian government headed by Abdallah Hamdok. According to the current Sudanese constitution, this structure is to remain in place until November 2022, when elections are scheduled. Meanwhile there is no functioning parliament, as it was disbanded when al-Bashir was toppled.

 Sadiq al-Mahdi, the leader of the Islamist National Umma Party which is part of the ruling coalition, has warned that he would leave the government if the “treacherous” agreement with Israel were signed before then. According to the Arab Opinion Index, which is the biggest opinion survey in the region, 79% of Sudanese opposed relations with Israel.

 “A unified Sudanese government with a popular mandate will be better able to forge a warm and sustainable peace with Israel, whereas a rushed Israeli-Sudanese agreement has the potential to unravel Sudan’s transition and generate renewed support for Sudan’s Islamists and their foreign backers,” according to two experts with the United States Institute of Peace.

 Netanyahu said triumphantly that Khartoum was now saying the opposite of the infamous “three noes” of 1967. “Yes to peace with Israel, yes to the recognition of Israel and yes to normalisation with Israel. This is a new era.”

 But will the deal with Sudan make any difference to relations between Israelis and Palestinians? Conspicuously absent from any discussions with Khartoum is the question of the future of the occupied West Bank and the creeping annexation embodied by illegal settlements.

 Palestinians condemned the deal yet again as a “stab-in-the back”, as they did when the Abraham Accords were signed in the White House in September. It is an entirely understandable comment given that the drama of Israeli agreements with Arab states, whatever their motives, contribute nothing obvious towards resolving what is often described as the Middle East’s – and arguably the world’s - most intractable conflict.

IAN BLACK