If there is an image that speaks to the overreach of Israel’s strike on Hamas in Qatar, it is UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan hugging his Qatari counterpart, Emir Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, the next day.
The Emirati ruler was the first to visit Doha in a show of solidarity against Israel’s attack – a symbolic move given that Qatar and the UAE have long been at odds with competing visions for the region.
Although the two officially patched up ties years ago, the depth of their rift lingers with anyone who speaks with either’s respective officials or insiders.
As a former senior US intelligence officer summarised to Middle East Eye when asked about President Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan’s reaction to the Israeli attack: “He was probably half impressed that Israel was crazy enough to go through with it, and half scared out of his mind.”
Israel’s attack on Qatar was arguably the high point of an increasing belligerence in the region that has unnerved rich Sunni monarchs in the Gulf who are deeply entwined with the US, and who Washington has long sought to unite with Israel.
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Over 64,700 Palestinians have been killed by Israel’s genocide in Gaza, which has provoked anger across the Arab and Muslim world. Earlier this month, the Israeli government floated a plan to annex the occupied West Bank.
The Gulf monarchs were unnerved after Israel launched an unprecedented attack on Iran in June and have watched warily as it pummels Lebanon and Syria with impunity, all the while occupying swaths of its neighbour’s land and dictating where Damascus can deploy soldiers within its own borders.
The Gulf states are not monolithic, and each has its own priorities. A case in point is Syria, where Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey are aligning together, while the UAE continues to watch the Islamist government of President Ahmad al-Sharaa with more distrust.
Signs of UAE-Israel tensions
As Israel’s genocide in Gaza approaches its second year and its military forays accelerate with the acquiescence of Washington, ties to Arab states are under pressure.
Egypt, Israel’s oldest peace partner, has stopped cooperating with it, according to a senior US official.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia has pushed back vehemently against efforts by the US to cut a diplomatic deal with Israel without the creation of a Palestinian state. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman publicly called out Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
‘There is disagreement over the partnership with Israel. The biggest fans of the partnership are more in Dubai then Abu Dhabi’
– Hussein Ibish, Arab Gulf States Institute
Despite this, Israel had been able to count on its ties to the UAE – its strongest partner in the Arab world. Now, signs of strain are emerging here, too.
This week, the UAE cancelled Israeli participation at the Dubai Airshow set to take place in November.
And the week before Israel struck Qatar, the UAE warned that Israel risked a “red line” if it annexed the occupied West Bank.
The warning carried weight because the UAE is the bedrock of the Abraham Accords, the 2020 agreements brokered during the first Trump administration, which saw Morocco, Bahrain, and the UAE establish formal relations with Israel.
The US framed the Abraham Accords as a historic breakthrough, but advocates of the Palestinian cause viewed it as a betrayal.
Analysts say that when it came to the UAE, both sides missed the point.
The UAE was established in 1971 as a federation of seven emirates. Unlike Egypt, Jordan and even Saudi Arabia, it never fought a war with Israel. The UAE is home to ten million residents, but only one million are Emiratis – the rest are expats and foreign labourers.
US envoy Tom Barrack – who enjoys close ties to Emirati leaders – gave perhaps the best explanation of the relationship when he said bin Zayed “ran” to the Abraham Accords because he had a small country governed by a “monarchy”.
Hussein Ibish, a senior scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, told MEE that the UAE remained committed to its strategic calculus of the Abraham Accords, including one of its main foundations: deepening economic and technological cooperation. But he said Israel’s destabilising actions are starting to alarm some.
“You usually don’t get factions in the UAE. Major foreign policy decisions are made in Abu Dhabi with consultations from Dubai and occasionally Sharjah,” Ibish explained, referencing the three largest and most powerful emirates in descending order.
“[But] sometimes issues are so fraught that you get factionalism. And there is disagreement over the partnership with Israel. The biggest fans of the partnership with Israel are more in Dubai than Abu Dhabi, and the more sceptics about how much leeway to give Israel are in Sharjah and Ras al-Khaimah,” he said.
In the US, the Abraham Accords were billed as uniting the UAE and Israel against Iran. But Israel has weakened Iran in Syria and Lebanon, and the UAE itself has patched up ties with the Islamic Republic.
The annexation litmus test
The main pillars for the UAE’s decision to make its quiet ties with Israel official have not really changed.
A decade ago, both were opposed to democratically elected Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in Egypt. The UAE and Israel continue to view the Muslim Brotherhood as an enemy. Hamas is an offshoot of the group. And the UAE wants investment and technology more than ever, with the advent of AI.
But Firas Maksad, Middle East director at the Eurasia Group, told MEE that the Abraham Accords were never “cost-free” for the UAE and carried risk, the main one being that the Arab and Muslim world would react with fury at the thought of the UAE brushing aside the Palestinians.
‘The UAE stuck their necks out for Israel after 7 October [2023]’
– Firas Maksad, Eurasia Group
“The UAE stuck their necks out for Israel after 7 October [2023],” Maksad told MEE. “They put themselves on the line and were so outspokenly critical of Hamas. They stuck with Israel and have saw nothing for it.”
The UAE’s warning about a “red line” over Israel’s annexation of the occupied West Bank caught the eyes of diplomats and analysts.
“The very premise of the Abraham Accords, as far as the Emiratis see it, was preventing the annexation of the West Bank,” Maksad said.
Indeed, in 2021, the UAE publicly framed its decision to enter the Abraham Accords as a move to preserve the option of a two-state solution. “The reason it happened, the way it happened, at the time it happened was to prevent annexation,” The UAE’s ambassador to the US, Yousef al-Otaiba, said.
But when push came to shove, the UAE made it clear to everyone that it would not make its ties with Israel conditional on annexation.
Just one month before the genocide in Gaza erupted in 2023, following the Hamas-led 7 October 2023 attack on southern Israel, Otaiba said a “de facto” annexation of the occupied West Bank was underway and that the UAE would not stand in the way.
“Our deal was based on a certain time period, and that time period is almost done, and so we have no ability to leverage the decisions that are made outside of the period that was what the Abraham Accords was based on,” he said, referring to its ability to stop annexation.
“It’s about Gaza now,” Abdulaziz Alghashian, a Saudi researcher and senior nonresident fellow at the Gulf International Forum, told MEE, explaining that the UAE is trying to thread the needle between its desire to maintain ties with Israel and anger over Israel’s onslaught.
All eyes will be on the UAE as a litmus test for how far Israel can go. Qatar is now calling for a collective Arab response to Israel’s attack.
Meanwhile, the UAE did not provide specifics on what the repercussions of Israeli annexation in the occupied West Bank would be.
Separating Gaza and the West Bank
Since 7 October 2023, the UAE has been an outlier of sorts with Arab states. For example, when asked in February about US President Donald Trump’s Gaza “Riviera plan” that most interpreted as a call for ethnic cleansing, Otaiba said on the record that Abu Dhabi saw no “alternative” to it.
MEE previously revealed that the UAE has been lobbying the US against an Arab League plan for Gaza and was supportive of Israel displacing Palestinians there to Egypt. Ties with Cairo became strained over that lobbying, but Abu Dhabi has continued with its crucial investments there, which are critical to cash-strapped Egypt. That dance underscores the complexity of the UAE’s ties with many countries, including how it views Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
“There are tacitly two files. One on Gaza and one on the West Bank,” Alghashian said.
‘There is an Arab consensus and it’s not 100 percent to what the UAE would like’
– Abdulaziz Alghashian, Gulf International Forum
The UAE has long viewed Hamas as a threat. But it also looked down with distain on its main secular rival, Fatah, in the occupied West Bank. The UAE’s preferred Palestinian ally is Mohammad Dahlan, diplomats and analysts say, an exiled Fatah leader from Gaza who has become an emissary for Abu Dhabi in other hotspots.
Although ties are stressed, few analysts expect the UAE to radically break with Israel, or signal displeasure by forcefully backing the Arab League plan for post-war Gaza. The plan calls for the Palestinian Authority to take over the enclave and leaves some room for Hamas as a political actor.
“There is an Arab consensus, and it’s not 100 percent to what the UAE would like. They will not go against it, but they are preparing themselves to be the disruptor of the Arab consensus. That is the main utility of the UAE for the US and Israel,” Algashian said.
In other areas like the Horn of Africa, the UAE remains aligned with Israel. For example, reports say that the UAE has been pressing Somaliland to accept forcibly displaced Palestinians in exchange for US recognition. The breakaway republic is an ally of the UAE.
“There might be even more disagreement [in the UAE] over the Horn of Africa than over Israel. No one in the UAE establishment is dead-set against the Abraham Accords as a strategic matter,” Ibish said.
