Israel stepped back from discussing a plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank on Thursday after the United Arab Emirates said the move would severely undermine the spirit of the Abraham Accords, the agreement which normalised UAE-Israeli relations.
The UAE was the most prominent of the three Arab states to sign the accords with Israel when US president Donald Trump was first in office.
Determined to resolve the long-standing Arab-Israeli dispute, the first Trump administration put pressure on Arab states to establish diplomatic relations with Israel under the Abraham Accords, which referred to the three Abrahamic faiths – Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
The UAE and Bahrain signed the accords at a White House ceremony in 2020. Morocco and Sudan subscribed later that year.
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When the UAE signed up to the accords, it said the normalisation of relations was dependent on an Israeli announcement that annexation was off the table.
Speaking on Wednesday, after Israel’s far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich called for annexation of large areas of the West Bank, Lana Nusseibeh, envoy of the minister of foreign affairs of the UAE, said: “From the very beginning, we viewed the accords as a way to enable our continued support for the Palestinian people and their legitimate aspiration for an independent state.”
Since establishing diplomatic relations in 2020, the UAE and Israel have granted visa-free travel between the countries and encouraged tourism and trade.
But the UAE foreign ministry condemned the October 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas and has since castigated Israel for its assault on civilians in Gaza. Live television streaming of Israel’s Gaza campaign has deepened popular Arab opposition to dealings with Israel and put normalisation on hold.
The UAE has carried out nearly 70 airdrops of humanitarian aid over Gaza and dispatched thousands of lorry loads of food and medical supplies to the strip.
[ Israeli bombardment pushes more Palestinians out of homes in Gaza CityOpens in new window ]
Egypt was first state to break Arab ranks and make a separate peace deal with Israel in 1979.
Jordan concluded a treaty with Israel in 1994 only after the Palestinians had reached signed up to the 1993 Oslo accords, which were expected to grant Palestinians a degree of self-rule.
While Arab rulers have supported peace and normalisation with Israel, public opinion in the region has remained opposed to the process while Palestinians remain stateless and under Israeli occupation.
New unilateral normalisation deals are unlikely as long as the Gaza war continues.
Having assumed a leading role in the Arab and Muslim worlds, Saudi Arabia has condemned Israel’s war in Gaza and demanded a Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem as its price for normalising relations with Israel.
Riyadh and Paris are to convene the UN meeting where Canada, Britain, France, Australia, Malta and Belgium are set to recognise a Palestinian state, joining the 147 UN members out of 193 which have adopted this stand. – Additional reporting: Reuters
