In what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called another example of warming ties with formally hostile states, an Israeli aircraft has flown through Sudanese airspace for the first time.
Israel remains technically at war with Sudan during the rule of president Omar al-Bashir.
Bashir was ousted by the army last April following months of mass anti-government demonstrations.
“The first Israeli airplane passed yesterday over the skies of Sudan. This is quite a change,” Netanyahu told American Jewish leaders in Jerusalem on Sunday evening, without offering further details.
Israeli daily Haaretz quoted an Israeli government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, saying that the plane was “a private Israeli executive jet”.
Netanyahu met Sudan’s leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan two weeks ago for what the Israeli premier’s office described as talks aimed at normalizing ties.
A Sudanese government spokesman said later that Burhan “did not give a promise of normalizing or having diplomatic relations”.
Sudan has been part of a decades-old Arab boycott of Israel over its treatment of the Palestinians and its occupation of Arab lands.
Netanyahu said Sunday that visible signs of a thaw in relations with Sudan and other Muslim-majority countries were only the tip of the diplomatic iceberg.
Netanyahu was speaking two weeks ahead of a March general election, the third in 12 months.
He has twice failed to form a government after inconclusive polls.
