The New York Times - USA (2020-10-25)

THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONALSUNDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2020 N 15

BRUSSELS — President An-
drzej Duda of Poland has tested
positive for Covid-19 and will go
into quarantine, his spokesman
said on Saturday, adding to the list
of global leaders who have been
infected as coronavirus cases rise
unabated in several world hot
spots.
“The president is feeling well,”
the spokesman, Blazej Spychal-
ski, said of Mr. Duda. The head of
the presidential office said that it
would “probably compile a list of
the president’s contacts,” adding
that this was “a new situation.”
The country’s de facto leader,
Jaroslaw Kaczynski, also went
into self-isolation this week, after
learning that he had been in con-
tact with someone infected with
the virus. A government spokes-
man said that Mr. Kaczynski, the
71-year-old leader of the govern-
ing Law and Justice Party, “feels
well and will continue performing
his duties from home.”
Poland, the Czech Republic and
Bulgaria are experiencing among
the most severe outbreaks in Eu-
rope. This second wave of infec-
tion has led Poland’s government
to impose new restrictions on pub-
lic life starting on Saturday and to
convert the country’s national sta-
dium in Warsaw into a temporary
field hospital with room for 500 co-
ronavirus patients.
Mr. Duda visited the stadium on
Friday and met with site manag-
ers, an encounter that has now
raised concerns that the construc-
tion will have to be halted. He also
met Iga Swiatek, who this month
became the first Polish female
tennis player to win the French
Open.
Although Mr. Duda wore a

mask and gloves during his sta-

dium visit, Mr. Kaczynski did not

wear a mask while handing out an

award at a ceremony last week,

and briefly removed his mask

while being sworn in as deputy

prime minister on Oct. 6.

Other world leaders who have

contracted the virus have taken

casual approaches to masks or re-

sisted them. President Trump,

who throughout the pandemic has

largely shunned the use of face

masks and social distancing prac-

tices, removed his mask during a

public appearance this month de-

spite having fallen ill with the vi-

rus.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson

of Britain, who in March boasted

of shaking hands with “everyone”

while visiting a hospital that was

treating coronavirus patients,

adopted a more somber approach

after being hospitalized with the

virus himself. President Jair Bol-

sonaro of Brazil continued to

question the merits of lockdown

measures even after contracting a

mild case of the virus.

In Poland, which largely

avoided the first wave of the pan-

demic by imposing an early lock-

down in March, nearly a third of

its approximately 215,000 total

cases have emerged in the past

week. The country, which Prime

Minister Mateusz Morawiecki

designated as a “red zone” at a

news conference on Friday, has

also had more than 4,000 recorded

deaths from the virus.

There are concerns about how

Poland’s underfunded health care

system will cope with the growing

number of virus patients. In addi-

tion to plans to turn the national

stadium into a field hospital, the

government said that temporary

virus hospitals would be also built

in major cities.

At the news conference, Mr.

Morawiecki also announced new

restrictions that came into effect

on Saturday.

The government ordered all ca-

fes, bars and restaurants to close,

except for take out, and gyms and

swimming pools were also shut.

Residents must use face cover-

ings outside their homes, and re-

mote teaching will become a norm

for older children in primary

schools, as well as in high schools

and at universities.

Young people up to 16 years old

are not allowed outside from 8

a.m. to 4 p.m. without adult super-

vision under the new measures,

and socializing in groups of more

than five is forbidden. The govern-

ment also asked that people over

70 stay home.

“We are far away from the com-

fort zone,” Adam Niedzielski, the

health minister, said during the

news conference.

Polish President Tests Positive for Virus

By MONIKA PRONCZUK

and TESS FELDER

MATEUSZ SLODKOWSKI/AFP — GETTY IMAGES

President Andrzej Duda of Po-

land is said to be feeling well

but has entered quarantine.

JERUSALEM — For Israel, the
move toward normalization of ties
with Sudan does not represent the
same kind of landmark strategic
achievement as the peace treaties
decades ago with Egypt and Jor-
dan, once-bitter Arab enemies on
its borders.
Nor does the move open up ma-
jor new economic opportunities,
as did Israel’s two new pacts with
the United Arab Emirates and
Bahrain, brokered by the Trump
administration in August.
About all that Israelis could
truly savor in Friday’s announce-
ment by President Trump that he
had fostered another diplomatic
breakthrough was its symbolic
value: Sudan was the scene of the
Arab League’s defiant 1967 Khar-
toum Resolution. Soon after Is-
rael’s victory in the Six-Day War,
the league’s members all vowed in
the resolution, “No to peace with
Israel, no recognition of Israel, no
negotiations with Israel.”
Suddenly, Sudan, of all the Arab
countries, was saying yes to all of
the above.
In that sense, even the limited
economic and trade relations that
Mr. Trump ballyhooed on Friday
as a victory “for peace in the
world” would drive another nail in
the coffin of the Palestine Libera-
tion Organization’s old strategy of
maintaining Arab solidarity be-
hind the rejection of Israel until
the Palestinians establish a state.
The step toward normalizing
relations with Israel would also
cement a Sudanese strategic re-
alignment begun in 2015, when af-
ter decades as an ally of Iran, the
African nation abruptly took
Saudi Arabia’s side in the Yemen
civil war and broke off relations
with Tehran the following year.
“That was the great turnover, or
the tipping point,” said Brig. Gen.
Assaf Orion, a veteran Israeli mili-
tary strategist at the Institute for
National Security Studies in Tel
Aviv. “When they moved over
from being a hub of Iranian weap-
ons proliferation to Gaza to at
least siding on the right side of the
Gulf, that’s a substantial thing,” he
added.
“When it becomes a diplomatic
achievement for Israel,” he said,
“it’s also nice.”
Dore Gold, a former director-
general of Israel’s foreign min-
istry with extensive experience in
Africa, said that Israel and Sudan
now were like-minded in wanting
to deny Iran, which he said once
had effective control of Port Su-
dan, a strategic presence in the
Red Sea.
Beyond that, he said, “I think
there’s a cumulative impact every
time you get another country, es-
pecially one of the largest in Afri-
ca, both in population and geo-
graphic expanse.”
As a practical matter, détente
with Sudan could open up a new, if
modest, market for Israel’s agri-
cultural, arms and medical indus-
tries, experts said. Overflight
rights for Israel could also shorten
some flights from Tel Aviv to
southern Africa or Latin America.
Some analysts also said that,
with its expertise at desalination

and desert-climate irrigation, Is-

rael could play a role in helping

Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia re-

solve their longstanding differ-

ences over the Blue Nile. Ethiopia

is building a huge, $4.6 billion dam

on the river, one that Mr. Trump

suggested on Friday that Egypt

“will end up blowing up” — a com-

ment that enraged Ethiopian lead-

ers.

But there were few illusions in

Israel about what was motivating

the Trump administration to race

to Friday’s announcement less

than two weeks before Election

Day. Privately, government offi-

cials said that aiding Israel could

help Mr. Trump peel off some Jew-

ish voters in pivotal swing states

like Florida or Pennsylvania.

Mr. Trump used the announce-

ment of the Sudan-Israel agree-

ment to ridicule his Democratic

opponent, Joseph R. Biden Jr.,

from the Oval Office on Friday.

“Do you think Sleepy Joe could

have made this deal, Bibi? Sleepy

Joe?” Mr. Trump asked Prime

Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of

Israel in a call that was televised

on cable news.

Perhaps mindful of polls show-

ing Mr. Biden in the lead, Mr. Ne-

tanyahu, who is facing his own po-

litical crisis, demurred.

“We appreciate the help for

peace from anyonein America,”

he replied. “And we appreciate

what you’ve done enormously.”

Irit Bak, a Sudan expert who

leads the African Studies depart-

ment at Tel Aviv University, said

she was disgusted by the two em-

battled leaders’ use of “the situa-

tion in Sudan, which is so desper-

ate,” to help themselves political-

ly.

She warned that normalizing

ties with Israel carried great peril

for the leaders of Sudan, a country

with a long history of Islamism.

Any blowback could be dangerous

for the fragile transitional govern-

ment, which came to power after

the ouster last year of the long-

time dictator Omar al-Bashir.

Relations between Israel and

Sudan have long been a roller-

coaster ride, frequently colorful,

generally covert, and often con-

frontational.

In 1948, a small detachment of

troops from Sudan, then under

Anglo-Egyptian rule, were among

the Arab armies Israel fought

against in its war of independ-

ence.

After Sudan gained independ-

ence in 1956, Israel secretly aided

the Anyanya separatist rebels in

southern Sudan, partly to pin

down as many Egyptian forces as

possible, who were aiding the

Muslim central government in

Khartoum. And Sudan sent a

small contingent of troops to aid

Egyptian forces in the 1967 war

with Israel.

In the late 1970s and 1980s, tens

of thousands of Ethiopian Jews

migrated to Sudan in hopes of get-

ting to Israel, and Israeli spies

mounted a series of daring opera-

tions to spirit them away under

the noses of Sudanese authorities.

The operation was managed from

a hotel on the Sudanese coast,

used as cover for Mossad agents,

in a clandestine operation de-

picted in the 2019 film “The Red

Sea Diving Resort.”

In the 1980s, Israeli officials

briefly plotted with Gen. Jaafar al-

Nimeiry, the Sudanese leader, to

stockpile weapons in his country

to be used to try to overthrow the

regime of Ayatollah Khomeini in

Iran. And in 1984, bribes to Gen-

eral al-Nimeiry and his security

chief led the Sudanese to turn a

blind eye as Israel airlifted 30,

more Ethiopian Jews from Khar-

toum.

The 1989 coup by Mr. al-Bashir,

however, led Sudan to take a sharp

turn toward Islamism and enter

into a long alliance with Iran,

which used Sudan to funnel weap-

ons to Hamas in Gaza.

Beginning in 2009, Israel con-

ducted airstrikes in Sudan against

suspected arms convoys, and in

2012 it bombed a munitions depot

in Khartoum, lighting up the night

skies.

In a more recent bit of derring-

do, the Mossad sent a private

plane loaded with medical gear

and doctors to Khartoum to try to

save an influential diplomat, Na-

jwa Gadaheldam, when she be-

came ill with Covid-19 in May. She

did not survive.

It was Ms. Gadaheldam who

had helped initiate the first public

meeting between Mr. Netanyahu

and the Sudanese military leader,

Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, in

Kampala, Uganda, in February.

For Israel, Warmer Ties With Sudan

May Be Symbolic Progress at Best

David M. Halbfinger reported
from Jerusalem, and Ronen
Bergman from Tel Aviv.

By DAVID M. HALBFINGER

and RONEN BERGMAN

A colorful relationship

that has been like a

roller coaster ride.

THE OFFICE OF SUDAN’S PRIME MINISTER

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with Prime Minister Abdalla

Hamdok of Sudan in a push to normalize its relations with Israel.

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Paid for by Amitai Etzioni

DEAR PROGRESSIVE,

NON-VOTERS.

I understand that there are four major

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I hope you also consider the fact that,

if all that President Biden does over the

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A few thousand votes for Ralph Nader

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Your vote matters more than ever.

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Amitai Etzioni

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