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The United Arab Emirates is reportedly planning to send its first official delegation to Israel on September 22; this, following last month’s US-brokered normalization agreement between Jerusalem and Abu Dhabi. It would come on the heels of last week’s monumental trip to the UAE by top US and Israeli officials. Leaders of the Gulf state are expected to finalize the details of the prospective visit after a date is set for the formal signing of the accord that will likely take place at the White House.
Meanwhile, the deal – which will reportedly be granted the same status as Israel’s peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan – is liable to have a significant economic impact, with Israeli Intelligence Minister Eli Cohen predicting that bilateral trade between the Jewish and Sunni states will reach $4 billion. The UAE has has already scrapped its longstanding boycott of Israel and officials from the two nations are currently exploring cooperation in the fields of defense, energy, medicine and tourism.
With respect to finance, the heads of Israel’s two largest banks are slated to lead separate missions to the United Arab Emirates later this month. Jerusalem and Abu Dhabi recently signed their first formal memorandum of understanding related to banking that included a commitment to preventing the funding of terrorism.
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The European Union has warned Serbia and Kosovo that they could weaken their chances of gaining membership in the bloc by opening up respective embassies in Jerusalem. Brussels has long maintained that Jerusalem’s final status should be determined through Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, although there is no longer a consensus due to Israel having made diplomatic inroads with numerous European countries, primarily those located in the eastern part of the continent.
Late last week, President Donald Trump announced that Kosovo would establish diplomatic ties with Israel and, in addition to Serbia, open an embassy in Jerusalem. For his part, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the development while noting that Kosovo is set to become the first Muslim-majority nation to open its primary mission in what the Jewish state considers its undivided capital.
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The Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) revealed that it had thwarted a Hamas plot to carry out bombings throughout the Jewish state. The Palestinian terror group recruited and then initially tasked Mahmoud Makdad, 30, with gathering intelligence on undertakings in Israel’s southern Negev region, but in recent months trained him to create explosive devices.
He was arrested on August 15.
The son of an Israeli Bedouin mother and a Gazan father, Makdad was chosen by Hamas due to his ability to move relatively freely from Israel to Gaza in order to visit family members, including his wife.
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The Tsofen not-for-profit organization has teamed up with the heads of Arab-majority locales with a view to launching a $237 million five-year plan to boost the number of Arab-Israeli engineers in the country to 20,000.
If the government agrees to fund the project, the investment could raise Israel’s GDP by some $1.5 billion given that Arab citizens are vastly under-represented in the tech sector.
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Oxford University will award two Israeli students its Rhodes Scholarship, which funds two or three years of advanced study at the institution. The grant covers full tuition, housing costs and airfare, and includes a stipend for living expenses.
Only six Israelis have, to date, received the honor, which is considered one of the most prestigious in the world.
Notable Rhodes Scholars include former US president Bill Clinton, three past Australian prime ministers and astronomer Edwin Hubble, after whom the famous telescope is named.
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Model May Tager is currently in Dubai to shoot an advertisement for the Israeli-based Fix undergarment and pajama company. She will be joined in the commercial by Emirati model Anastasia. According to Fix, the campaign will be modest and “appropriate for the place” where it is being filmed.
Fix chose to include Anastasia because it feels that “peace will continue through people and through joint work.”
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