UAE confirms Netanyahu visit to Abu Dhabi
The United Arab Emirates has confirmed that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan during a visit to the country.
The Israeli leader made the trip to the UAE capital, Abu Dhabi, on Sunday.
“During the meeting, the two sides discussed bilateral relations between the UAE and Israel and ways to strengthen and develop them,” the official Emirates News Agency, WAM, reported on Monday.
The meeting was earlier reported in the Israeli press.
The trip comes a month before Israeli elections and amid controversy in Israel over reports alleging that Bin Zayed, known as MBZ, had warned Netanyahu about a major Hamas operation in the lead-up to October 7, 2023.
Netanyahu’s office denies receiving information about the attacks. He said he would sue the Haaretz newspaper, calling its report “fabricated” and “politically motivated”.
Haaretz alleged that the UAE president spoke to Netanyahu on the phone about 10 days before the attack, warning him of a threat made by then-Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar that he was preparing a “huge surprise”. Bin Zayed had previously alerted Israel’s Shin Bet agency, the Haaretz report said.
In May, the UAE denied Netanayhu’s office’s claim that he had made a visit to the country to meet with Bin Zayed, saying its relations with Israel “are public and were established within the framework of the well-known and publicly declared Abraham Accords. These relations are not based on secrecy or clandestine arrangements”.
Relations between Israel and the UAE have warmed since the UAE signed the US-brokered Abraham Accords in 2020, which normalised ties between Israel and a number of Arab states.
United States Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said in May that Israel had deployed Iron Dome air defence batteries and personnel to the UAE to help defend against potential Iranian attacks.
Also in May, the UAE denied a claim made by Netanyahu’s office that he had made a visit to the country to meet with MBZ, saying its relations with Israel “are public and were established within the framework of the well-known and publicly declared Abraham Accords. These relations are not based on secrecy or clandestine arrangements”.
Israel’s Channel 12 first reported on Netananyhu’s trip to the UAE over the weekend. The Shin Bet agency filed a complaint with Israel’s military censor, saying the report endangered the prime minister and exposed Shin Bet’s operational methods, the AP reports.
