The president of the United Arab Emirate, Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, met with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the UAE on Sunday, official news agency WAM said, confirming earlier Israeli media reports about the meeting.
“The two sides discussed bilateral relations between the UAE and Israel and ways to strengthen and develop them,” the brief statement said.
It appeared to be the first time Abu Dhabi acknowledged the meeting.
On Monday, Israel said that Netanyahu had visited the UAE the day before to discuss the Iran war and regional issues.
“The visit focused on strengthening relations between the two countries and on regional challenges,” the prime minister’s office said in a statement on X.
The visit came weeks after a bombshell Israeli media report that the Emirati president had warned Netanyahu ahead of the Hamas-led attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, which the Israeli premier did not pass on to the security services.
Netanyahu has denied the story.
According to Israeli media, Netanyahu flew to the UAE on Sunday to ask Sheikh Mohamed to deny having given him that warning in 2023.
Meanwhile, Open Source Intel reported that Netanyahu had also met with “officials from several Gulf states,” during the UAE visit, noting that Israel has no formal diplomatic relations with many of them.
“Military and government aircraft that landed in Abu Dhabi during the visit included a Libyan government plane, a Moroccan Hercules, a Qatari military plane, and an Emirati government plane that flew in from Riyadh,” OSINT said in a post on X.
Israeli media also reported that delegations from Morocco, Libya, Jordan and Qatar had apparently attended the talks.
Earlier on Monday, before Netanyahu’s office formally confirmed the destination, Israel’s domestic security service filed a complaint against a TV channel that reported the visit.
“This evening the Shin Bet filed a complaint with the Chief Military Censor, demanding that Channel 12 be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law following a severe censorship violation,” read a statement from Netanyahu’s office, which oversees the security agency.
The publication of his visit “endangered the lives of the prime minister and his wife, as well as the delegation, which included the head of the Mossad” spy agency and other top security officials, the PM’s office said in its statement.
The visit was made public when the premier’s plane was still outside Israeli airspace, it noted.
Mossad, which also operates under the Prime Minister’s office, issued a similar condemnation, according to the statement.
In May, the UAE had denied reports that Netanyahu secretly visited the country, after Netanyahu’s own office said he had met with the UAE president during the war with Iran.
The UAE is a top US ally in the region and one of a handful of Arab nations with official ties to Israel after signing the Abraham Accords during US President Donald Trump’s first term in 2020.
The two countries grew closer during the conflict, with Israel reportedly sending its Iron Dome air defence systems, plus personnel to operate them, to the UAE.
Additional sources • AFP