UAE defends ties with Israel despite growing concerns over Gaza war

United Arab Emirates and Israel establish diplomatic relations in 2020 (representative)

Dubai, United Arab Emirates:

A top Emirati diplomat on Monday defended the UAE’s decision to maintain ties with Israel despite growing concerns about the war in Gaza.

The United Arab Emirates and Israel established diplomatic ties in 2020 as part of the U.S.-brokered Abraham Accords, making it one of the few Arab countries to recognize Israel.

Although it has maintained relations with Israel since the war with Hamas broke out in October, it has struggled to express solidarity with the Palestinians as anger over the conflict has grown in the Arab world.

Lana Nusseibeh was speaking at the World Government Summit in Dubai, an annual gathering of business and political leaders, where she praised the cooperation between the UAE and Israel.

“As a result of this cooperation… we have a field hospital in Gaza and a maritime hospital in the Egyptian port of El-Arish,” said Nusseibeh, the UAE’s ambassador to the United Nations.

For “the residents of Gaza, this is not enough. What we need is a humanitarian ceasefire and a two-state solution,” she added.

“Will we achieve this by talking to people who agree with us? No. We will achieve this by talking to people who disagree with us, and the UAE will always be proud of that.”

AFP According to official statistics, Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on southern Israel on October 7, killing about 1,160 people, most of them civilians, and began the bloodiest war in the history of the Gaza Strip.

Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas and has responded with a relentless offensive in Gaza that the region’s health ministry said has killed at least 28,340 people, mostly women and children.

In recent days, the UAE has joined several Arab Gulf states in warning Israel not to launch an offensive against the city of Rafah in the southernmost part of the Gaza Strip, where some 1.4 million people have sought asylum.

“The UAE is very worried right now,” Nusseibeh said.

“Any military action in Rafah would have unacceptable consequences,” the diplomat added.

Nusseibeh, who organized an unofficial visit to the Rafah crossing by a U.N. envoy last year, called for a two-state solution, arguing it was crucial to Gaza’s reconstruction.

“You cannot deny the Palestinian right to statehood, that is the Arab consensus,” she said.

“Irreversible progress must be made towards a two-state solution for regional partners to participate in (Gaza’s) reconstruction.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has shown no interest in resuming Palestinian statehood talks.

Nusseibeh added that the UAE has invested billions of dollars in development projects in Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank over the past three decades.

But “we can’t continue to issue refunds and then see everything we built destroyed,” she said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)