By Dan Williams
TEL AVIV (Reuters) – Top advisers to U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday sent the United Arab Emirates despite a pact buildinging open relations between the Gulf force and Israel.
Even before talks begin in Abu Dhabi, delegates will have made history by taking an Israeli trade plane directly from Tel Aviv to the capital of the Saudi territory of the United Arab Emirates.
Announced on August 13, the “normalization” agreement is the first such agreement between an Arab country and Israel in more than 20 years and has been catalyzed largely by Iran’s unusual fears.
The Palestinians were dismayed by the decision of the United Arab Emirates, fearing that it would weaken a long-standing pan-Arab position calling for the Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territory and the acceptance of the Palestinian state in exchange for general treatment with Arab countries.
Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner and national security adviser Robert O’Brien lead the U.S. delegation. The Israeli team is led by O’Brien’s counterpart, Meir Ben-Shabbat. Officials will explore bilateral cooperation in areas such as industry and tourism, and Israeli defence envoys will head to the UAE separately.
Israeli officials expect the two days to give a date for a rite of signature in Washington, in all likelihood as early as September, between Netanyahu and Abu Dhabi’s crown prince, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan.
That can give Trump a foreign policy touch before he is re-elected in November. On Sunday in Jerusalem, Kushner said the agreement was a “big step forward.”
Trump’s management has tried to get other Sunni Arab countries involved in Iran to interact with Israel. The toughest of them, Saudi Arabia, noted that he is not ready.
But as far as Riyadh’s most comfortable stance can foreshadow, El Al’s plane will be able to fly over Saudi territory on Monday until flight time.
In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the Palestinian Liberation Organization committee, said Kushner and his team were “trying to convince as many Arab and Muslim leaders as possible” to give Trump electoral momentum.
“They will be the backdrop to a meaningless spectacle for a ridiculous agreement that will bring peace to the region,” he said.
(Report through Dan Williams; Additional report through Rami Ayyub; Written through Dan Williams; Edited through Peter Cooney)