Israel-Emirates peace: An inside look
Crisscrossing Dubai, journalist Ben Caspit says that his four-day visit to the emirate this week reveals the intense potential that lies in the recent outing of Israel’s covert relations with the United Arab Emirates.
Dubai is gulping the dividends of the peace with Israel with great thirst. Business people, investors and the top echelons of the Emirati economy are rushing to forge promising Israeli connections, and vice versa. A four-day visit to the emirate this week reveals the intense potential that lies in the recent outing of Israel’s covert relations with the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
“It’s like someone wandering in the desert for years, tired, thirsty and hungry, and suddenly arriving at a perfect oasis,” enthused the director of a major Israeli firm on a Dubai visit with a delegation of Israeli high-tech and cyber experts. “And it’s not one-directional. They need us as much as we need them, there is mutual inspiration without the typical, regrettable condescension on our part [toward Arabs]. Dubai is not some forsaken desert principality thirsting for Israeli technology. It’s an amazing regional hub of investment, high-tech, industry and knowledge, a unique and influential leverage for investment and the connection between us and them could be a profit multiplier for both sides,” the director said on condition of anonymity.
