The Scene
There are anniversaries that are celebrated and those that are marked. For the first three years after the Abraham Accords were signed on the White House lawn, officials from Israel and the United Arab Emirates celebrated. But in the wake of the Hamas terrorist attack on Oct. 7, 2023, and ensuing war in Gaza, the fourth anniversary of the landmark agreement that normalized relations between Israel and two Gulf countries, the UAE and Bahrain, has come and gone quietly.
And yet: the accords are surviving. Trade between the two sides is still rising even amid the crisis.
In the first seven months of 2024, bilateral trade stood at $1.92 billion — 4% more than the same period last year.
It is a loss of momentum — trade rose 17% in 2023 compared to 2022 — and this year’s figures move the countries off track to meet a $10 billion annual target by 2028 that is still a relatively modest goal for two half-trillion-dollar economies.
“The war makes private sector investments from the UAE into Israel more challenging, but the state was always the lead in the flows,” Karen Young, a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, said. “Trade and investment continue.”
(The figures are drawn from Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, and don’t completely account for sensitive sectors like cybersecurity or defense, a spokesperson for the Abraham Accords Peace Institute, a Washington-based nonprofit, told Semafor.)
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A flurry of deals and milestones that would have once garnered attention have gone unnoticed since Oct. 7: The Abu Dhabi-backed Technology Innovation Institute, which focuses on AI development, plans to open a new center in Haifa; the UAE’s FlyDubai and Etihad maintained direct flights to Israel despite the war; and Mubadala Energy continued its investment and support of an expanded gas field in Israel.
“The UAE-Israel relationship remains strong, despite regional tensions,” Asher Fredman, director for Israel of the Abraham Accords Peace Institute, told Semafor.
The pact has also allowed the UAE to play a central role in humanitarian efforts in Gaza, Fredman added, in coordination with Israel. The UAE has evacuated nearly 2,000 injured and ill Palestinian patients and their families, and delivered 40,000 tons of aid.
One venture capitalist in Israel, who declined to be named citing sensitivities between the two countries, said that VC investment activity and knowledge exchange among Israeli and Emirati startups also remained a bright spot. No deals, the investor said, have been canceled as a result of the war, but no announcements are being made, either.
Demonstrations are prohibited in the UAE, so the absence of pro-Palestinian protests is unsurprising. Still, a temperature change can be felt in other ways.
Boycotts of popular brands over their ties to Israel have dented sales at McDonald’s, KFC, and Starbucks, Al-Monitor reported. For a time, QR codes popped up on tables at McDonald’s UAE franchises, directing customers to the chain’s corporate website for information about the Golden Arches’ stance on Israel and Palestine while munching french fries. Cafe BiBi, a Kosher restaurant in Dubai now has a sign that says: Cafe Habibi.
Marcy Schwartzman, a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council, wrote that one need only look at embassies’ social media accounts to notice a shift. The Israeli Ambassador to the UAE Amir Hayek mostly sticks to sharing holiday wishes. One of Emirati Ambassador to Israel Mohamed al-Khaja’s last substantial posts on X was last year, on the third anniversary of the Abraham Accords.
Measured solely through trade, the Abraham Accords have held. But they were meant to usher in a wider peace in the region — one that has failed to materialize.
The war in Gaza has put Arab leaders on the diplomatic defensive and delayed the normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel, a deal that appeared close before Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks, but which now is in limbo.
Ahead of the UN General Assembly’s high-level meetings next week, Emirati Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan made clear the UAE’s stance that a Palestinian state must be established in order to end the war in Gaza, a rare, explicit, high-level endorsement of a two-state solution. The Gulf state’s ambassador said the UAE won’t contribute to rebuilding Gaza until that happens.