Emiratis land in Israel, firming new ties and angering Palestinians

Diplomats from the United Arab Emirates on Tuesday made their first official trip to Israel since the countries normalized relations in August, and the two sides signed pacts deepening their ties, including allowing their citizens to travel from one country to the other without visas — Israel’s first such waiver with an Arab state.

Confined to the Ben-Gurion Airport tarmac as a coronavirus-related precaution, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and Obaid Hamaid Al Tayer, the UAE’s minister of state for financial affairs — along with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin of the United States, which brokered the new diplomatic relationship — marked the milestone under a temporary canopy, with an Etihad Boeing 787 Dreamliner providing the backdrop.

“Today we are making history,” Netanyahu said, assuring his guests that “the enthusiasm for this peace agreement among our peoples is enormous, it’s real, it’s broad, it’s deep.”

These ties create a tremendous foundation for economic growth, opportunity, innovation and prosperity,” Mnuchin added.

But some aspects of the bilateral pacts announced Tuesday further antagonized the Palestinians, who were enraged by the Emiratis’ decision to bring their below-the-radar cooperation with Israel into the open with formal diplomatic relations. The Palestinians had long counted on Arab solidarity to deny Israel such normalization until they had achieved statehood.

Also read: Israel, UAE agree to visa-free travel as ties deepen

Tuesday’s visa-waiver agreement, in particular, frustrated Palestinians who pointed out that Israel would now let Emiratis visit Israel and Jerusalem with ease, while still forcing residents of the West Bank and Gaza Strip to submit to an often insurmountable permitting process, including extensive security checks, before gaining access to Muslim holy sites like the Aqsa mosque compound.

“I need a permit issued by the Israeli military to visit Jerusalem,” Salem Barameh, who leads the Palestinian Institute for Public Diplomacy, wrote on Twitter. “The city I was born in. But now an Emirati can go visa-free because two warmongering, human rights abusing regimes made a deal together for weapons. Does this sound just to you?”

Trump administration officials also announced that the governments of the United States, the UAE and Israel will create a $3 billion investment fund, to be called the Abraham Fund, that would seek to promote private investment in Israel, the West Bank, and elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa.