Yair Lapid thanked the UAE’s leaders for their “vision and inspiration” as well as Israel’s former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “the architect of the Abraham Accords,” former U.S. President Donald Trump and current U.S. President Joe Biden.
By JNS and EJP
Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid flew to the United Arab Emirates on Tuesday in a historic first official visit by an Israeli minister to the Gulf State.
“What we are doing here today isn’t the end of the road, it’s the beginning. From here, from this place, we are setting out on the road,” Lapid said at a ceremony inaugurating Israel’s Embassy in Abu Dhabi.
He said: “Israel wants peace with its neighbours. With all its neighbours. We aren’t going anywhere. The Middle East is our home. We’re here to stay. We call on all the countries of the region to recognise that and to come talk to us … peace isn’t a compromise. It’s the most definitive choice we can make. Peace isn’t weakness. It includes within it all the strength of the human spirit. War is surrender to all that is bad within us. Peace is the victory of all that is good.”
The UAE, along with Bahrain, signed the Abraham Accords, a normalization agreement with Israel, in September 2020. It was the first agreement signed between Israel and an Arab state in 26 years, the last one in 1994 with Jordan. Later Morocco and Sudan also joined the U.S.-brokered deals.
Lapid thanked the UAE’s leaders for their “vision and inspiration” as well as Israel’s former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “the architect of the Abraham Accords,” former U.S. President Donald Trump and current U.S. President Joe Biden.
Speaking after Lapid, UAE Culture and Knowledge Development Minister Noura Al Kaabi said that “it is essential that we prepare ourselves and our children toward a new world.” “Israel and the UAE have inspired other countries in the region to follow us towards peace. With the opening of this embassy, we can expand cooperation and relations between our two peoples will flourish,” she added.
Together with al-Kaabi, Lapid affixed a mezuzah at the embassy, a Jewish tradition in which a parchment containing verses from the Bible is affixed to a doorpost. Present at the ceremony was Rabbi of the UAE Jewish community Levi Duchman, Israeli Foreign Ministry Director-General Alon Ushpiz and Israeli Foreign Ministry Commissioner Eitan Na’eh.
Lapid was greeted in Abu Dhabi, UAE’s capital, by Ahmed Al Sayegh, UAE’s Minister of State and Chairman of Abu Dhabi Global Market, the international financial center.
The opening on the Israeli embassy is seen as important landmark in the ongoing development in relations between Israel and the UAE. Although initiated and signed by the previous government, there is a strong consensus in Israel for supporting all the normalisation agreements.
Netanyahu had hoped to be the first Israeli minister to visit the UAE following the peace agreement and did not allow any of his ministers to visit before him, but his trip was postponed on several occasions.
The Israel-UAE agreement signed last year included a full diplomatic exchange of embassies and ambassadors as well as cooperation in a variety of spheres, including finance and investment, civil aviation, innovation, trade and economic relations, healthcare, science, technology, and space cooperation for peaceful uses. There is also the potential for enhanced security cooperation facing the shared threat from Iran.
The agreement signed yesterday committed both sides to “developing economic relations and free flow of goods and services, as well as cooperation regarding trade fairs, exchanges of experts and knowledge, exchanges of delegations, cooperation in standardisation and regulation, encouraging cooperation of the private sector, encouraging research and development, agro-technologies and more”.
Lapid was set to visit Wednesday Dubai for the ceremonial opening of the Israeli consulate.