The head of the Sovereignty Council of Sudan, Lt. Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan (R). Photo: Reuters / Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah / File.

i24 News – The Sudanese Sovereignty Council, the country’s de facto ruling body, has decided to go ahead with normalizing the country’s ties with Israel, sources close to the Sudanese leadership told i24 News.

A source close to the council told the Arabic-language edition of i24 News that after a heated discussion late on Wednesday, the council decided to yield to US pressure and forge formal ties with Israel.

According to reports in Sudanese and Arab media outlets, Washington gave Sudan 24 hours to respond to an ultimatum demanding that Sudan recognizes Israel and normalizes its ties with the Jewish state in exchange for being removed from the US blacklist of terrorism supporters.

As US and Israeli officials repeatedly vowed that more countries would join in on the normalization push, Sudan was speculated to be one of the likeliest countries to follow the UAE and Bahrain in normalizing relations with Israel.

Earlier, i24 News reported that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Sovereignty Council chair Abdel Fattah al-Burhan were supposed to meet in the near future to discuss the prospect.

Netanyahu already spoke with Burhan earlier this year during a surprise meeting in Uganda, which sparked a public outcry in Sudan.

The Sudanese leadership has long appeared split on the prospect of normalizing ties with Israel — a plan apparently backed by its military component, but not as much by the civilian one.