Published: 5 March 2021
Last updated: 4 March 2024
I WAS GOOGLING around the other day for a factoid: how many Israelis had visited the United Arab Emirates since the signing of their normalisation agreement, known as the Abraham Accords. Answer: more than 130,000.
Jumping Jehoshaphat, Batman! In the middle of a global pandemic, at least 130,000 Israeli tourists and investors have flown to Dubai and Abu Dhabi since commercial air travel was established in mid-October!
I believed from the start that the openings between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan — forged by Jared Kushner and Donald Trump — could be game-changing. We are still in the early phase, though, and having lived through the shotgun marriage and divorce of Israelis and Lebanese Christians in the 1980s, I will wait a bit before sending wedding gifts.
That caveat aside, something big seems to be stirring. Unlike the peace breakthroughs between Israel and Egypt, Israel and Lebanon’s Christians and Israel and Jordan, which were driven from the top and largely confined there, the openings between Israel and the Gulf States — while initiated from the top to build an alliance against Iran — are now being driven even more from the bottom, by tourists, students and businesses.
A new Hebrew language school that holds classes in Dubai and Abu Dhabi has been swamped with Emiratis wanting to study in Israel or do business there.
Israel’s Mekorot National Water Company just finalised a deal to provide Bahrain with desalination technology for brackish water. The Times of Israel recently ran an article about Elli Kriel in Dubai, who “has become the go-to kosher chef in the UAE. Last year, Kriel launched Kosherati, which sells kosher-certified Emirati cuisine, as well as fusion Jewish-Emirati dishes.”
If the Abraham Accords do thrive and broaden to include normalisation between Israel and Saudi Arabia, we are talking about one of the most significant realignments in modern Middle East history.
FULL STORY TOM FRIEDMAN: Jumping Jehoshaphat! Have you seen how many Israelis just visited the UAE? (New York Times)
Photo: UAE (Christopher Pike/Bloomberg)
