Benjamin Netanyahu to visit the UAE next week

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is to visit the United Arab Emirates for the first time next week, according to the UAE’s ambassador to the United States.

News of the visit came in a webinar on Monday with Ambassador Yousef al-Otaiba and comes just days after Israel officially opened its embassy in Abu Dhabi, the Emirati government having likewise decided to open its own embassy in Tel Aviv.

The Israeli mission is being led by Eitan Na’eh, a former deputy ambassador in London who later became Israel’s man in Turkey.

Netanyahu will meet Na’eh as well as the kingdom’s rulers during a landmark visit following the signing of the Abraham Accords last year between Israel, the UAE and Bahrain. The two Gulf states were the first to normalise relations with the Jewish state, later followed by Sudan and Morocco.

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Shortly after Netanyahu’s visit, Israeli weapons will be on show in Abu Dhabi for the first time ever, after Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) got its first official visit to the IDEX exhibition, complete with its own booth and virtual displays.

The Israeli exhibit will cover systems for use in the air, sea, land, space, and in the cyber domain. IAI bosses said it was “a window for extended cooperation, sharing of knowledge, promoting investment, development and localisation of joint technology”.

They added that they were “open to promoting defence as well as civilian endeavours on a range of topics, such as space and satellites, air defence and rocketry, intelligence, robotics, UAVs [drones], and cyber… This exhibition is a harbinger of long-term activity in the UAE and in the region as a whole”.