Story of Israel’s hand in Sudan division - The National
►http://www.thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/comment/story-of-israels-hand-in-sudan-division
In 2008, Avi Dichter, the former Israeli minister of internal security, gave a lecture at the Israeli Institute for National Security Studies where he said that since the independence of Sudan in the mid-1950s, there were some Israeli estimates that this African state must not be allowed to become an added force in the Arab world, according to an article by columnist Hafmy Huweidi in the Emirati newspaper Al Khaleej.
That Sudan turned out to be “a strategic backyard” for Egypt during its 1967 war against Israel only further fuelled concerns in Israel. In fact, Sudan and Libya served as training bases and arm depots for the Egyptian military.
“So Israel had to penetrate the Sudanese arena to exacerbate existing crises and foment new ones.”
In his book Israel and the Movement for the Liberation of South Sudan, published in 2003 by the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, the retired Mossad Brig Gen Moshe Fergie wrote that Israel’s support to South Sudan rebels has gone through five phases: 1950s, through humanitarian aid; early 1960s, by training members of the “Popular Army” in Ethiopian outposts; mid-1960s-1970s, by routing weapons to the South; late 1970s-1980s, by backing southern leader John Garang; late 1990s, by providing the South with heavy weaponry via Kenya and Ethiopia.