July 14, 2021: The UAE opened an embassy in Israel, housed in a new Tel Aviv stock exchange building, under an agreement reached by Washington last year.
The location in the middle of Israel’s Mali district highlights that economic cooperation has played a central role since the UAE became the third majority Arab country to recognize the Jewish state. Accompanied by new Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Emirati Ambassador Mohammed al-Khawaja called the opening of the embassy “an important milestone in the growing relationship between our two countries.”
“The United Arab Emirates and Israel are both modern countries, and we can work to move our creativity towards a more prosperous and sustainable future for our countries and our region,” he said. Herzog called for the “historic agreement” with the UAE to be “extended to other countries seeking peace with Israel.”
Israel and the United Arab Emirates have signed agreements on everything from tourism to financial services to aviation, following the normalization of relations through the so-called Ibrahim Accords by the administration of former US President Donald Trump. Wednesday’s ceremony in the lobby of the stock exchange, a two-story building below the embassy, followed an important visit by Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid to the United Arab Emirates last month, which opened an embassy in Abu Dhabi and a consulate in Dubai.
The Palestinians were outraged by the UAE’s decision to establish relations with Israel, which broke with decades of Arab consensus that relations between Israel and the Palestinians should not be normalized without a comprehensive and lasting peace. Following the UAE agreement, Israel normalized relations with Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan, which also sparked Palestinian protests. But Israel and the UAE have sought to emphasize the economic benefits offered by the norm.
Lipid told Emirati media last month that bilateral trade had exceeded $675.22 million since the Ibrahim Accords were signed in September 2020. The agreement to normalize Israel was reached under former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Lipid was the architect of the coalition that ousted Netanyahu last month, but he, along with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, has vowed to maintain Netanyahu’s policy of pursuing deep ties in the Arab world.
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