The Sudanese Foreign Minister has accused the leaders of the Justice and Equality Movement, one of the main rebel factions in Darfur, of "making regular visits to Israel." Both the JEM and Israel deny the accusation, and its timing is, to say the least, suspicious. There have been no previous reports of Israeli involvement in Darfur, and Khartoum's announcement comes at a time when it is trying to rally Arab support against Western intervention, and playing the Israel card seems calculated to do just that.
On the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised if Israel were backing the JEM. Israel has connections to Uganda, Eritrea and the SPLM, all of which oppose Khartoum, and it has often followed a strategic policy of allying with non-Arab peoples on the fringes of the Arab world. It would be entirely in character for Israel to support the Darfur rebels - and if so, there are plenty of worse things Israel could do than offer aid to people facing ethnic cleansing and mass murder.
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I don't approve of this sentiment - in fact, I disapprove in the strongest terms - but it does exist and it's something that has to be taken into account in planning interventions in the region. There's a reason why Israel hasn't been asked, for instance, to participate in the reconstruction of Iraq, and that reason may be morally unsound but it's very sound realpolitik. I wish this were a world in which Israel could do the right thing in Darfur without leading to adverse political consequences for its people, but unfortunately we're not living in that world.
As always, Jon has good insight into the situation. But in the meantime, the atrocities continue. Could you imagine what a hundred thousand troops could do in Sudan instead of being squandered in Iraq? We'd need a tenth of the manpower required in Iraq and we could have actually saved thousands of people instead of killing them.
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