Netanyahu says Israel and Sudan to soon normalise ties

Officials would wait for "clarifications" on Burhan's return, Salih said in a later statement.A senior Palestinian official denounced Monday's meeting as a "stab in the back of the Palestinian people".This was also a "stark departure from the Arab peace initiative at a time when the administration of [US] President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu are trying to liquidate the Palestinian cause," Saeb Erekat, secretary-general of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), said in a statement carried by official news agency WAFA.Normalising relations with Sudan, where Arab states gathered in 1967 to issue what became known as the "Three No's" - no recognition of Israel, no peace with Israel and no negotiations with Israel - would allow Netanyahu to burnish his diplomatic credentials a month before the country's March 2 election."Netanyahu believes that Sudan is moving in a new and positive direction," the Israeli statement said.Sudan's leader, it added, "is interested in helping his country go through a modernisation process by removing it from isolation and placing it on the world map".The Associated Press news agency quoted a Sudanese military official as saying the meeting was coordinated by the United Arab Emirates and also aimed at removing Sudan from the US's list of "state sponsors of terrorism".In January 2016, Sudan's former Foreign Minister Ibrahim Ghandoor had said normalising relations with Israel would be possible in exchange for the lifting of US sanctions on his country.Israel previously considered Sudan a security threat, due to Iran's suspected use of the country as a conduit for overland smuggling of munitions to the occupied Gaza Strip.