Israel’s Minister of the Economy Orna Barbivai and Emirati Minister of State for Foreign Trade Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi announced April 1 that they had just completed negotiations to create a comprehensive free trade zone between the two countries. The agreement is expected to go into effect once the two ministers sign it, and it is ratified by both countries’ governments.

Practical deliberations about the agreement began last November, just over a year after the signing of the Abraham Accords. The normalization agreement launched a new era in the relations between the two countries, including burgeoning economic and commercial relations.

This is the first comprehensive free trade agreement between Israel and any Arab state, and it is going into effect so soon after the two nations established diplomatic relations. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has very few trade agreements like this, and these are limited to other Gulf states and the EFTA states (European nations that are not part of the European Union).

As far as Israel is concerned, its importance lies in serving as a free trade bridge to the entire Gulf, a region that is already undergoing rapid development as a result of the Abraham Accords.