Covert Contact 107: Understanding the Israel-UAE Deal

Alon Pinkas returns to discuss the announcement that Israel and the United Arab Emirates would move toward normalizing relations. Speaking shortly after the August 2020 announcement, he considers what the agreement changes, how the different governments presented it, and why its significance deserves a careful reading beyond the celebratory language.

We begin with the distinction between a public diplomatic breakthrough and relationships that had already developed out of view. Pinkas describes the informal ties and intelligence cooperation connecting Israel with several Gulf states, particularly around terrorism and shared concerns about Iran. Formal recognition matters, but it also brings an existing relationship into a more visible and potentially broader framework.

The conversation examines the differences in emphasis between the American, Israeli, and Emirati accounts. Pinkas draws attention to the Emirati framing of a path toward bilateral relations and to the suspension of plans to annex parts of the West Bank. Those distinctions matter when assessing what has actually been agreed and what remains to be worked out.

We then consider the Palestinian issue. Pinkas supports normalization while arguing that stronger ties with other Arab countries do not remove Israel’s need to address its relationship with the Palestinians. He warns against treating their exclusion from a diplomatic success as an uncomplicated gain, since the underlying conflict and the need to live alongside one another remain.

The discussion places the announcement within a wider regional picture: concerns about Iran, changing expectations of American involvement, and the possibility that other Gulf states might follow the UAE’s path. With the American presidential election still ahead at the time of recording, we also discuss how a different administration might approach the relationship between regional normalization and Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy. The emphasis is on the opening the announcement creates, alongside the unresolved questions that its public presentation can obscure.