Israel Culture Minister arrives in UAE
In first, Israel’s Culture and Sports Minister Miri Regev today arrived
in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to attend the Abu Dhabi Grand Slam
Judo tournament.
Regev was invited to attend the event earlier this month to accompany
Israel’s national judo team as they compete in the Emirati capital.
President of the International Judo Federation (IJF), Marius Vizer,
wrote to Regev on 2 October to invite her to the tournament and promised
to “make all the necessary arrangements for [her] visit”.
The invitation came after the IJF demanded that the UAE allow the
Israeli team to play its national anthem and fly its flag during the
tournament. The event had previously been threatened with cancellation
after the IJF stripped the UAE of the right to host the tournament due
to its failure to guarantee “equal treatment” for Israeli athletes. In
September, the UAE accepted the IJF’s conditions and allowed the Israeli
judoists to sport their national insignia.
Regev’s attendance at the event – which is taking place from 25-27
October – will be seen as controversial in light of the lack of official
relations between Israel and the UAE. In addition, Israeli passports
are not valid for travel to the UAE.
However, the UAE has recently been pursuing a policy of normalisation
with Israel. In September, it hosted secret backchannel talks between
Israel and Turkey in an attempt to mend strained Israeli-Turkish
relations. Envoys from the two countries flew into Abu Dhabi via Amman,
Jordan, though neither government would confirm the purpose of the
talks.
In August, an Israeli journalist claimed that an Emirati pilot
participated in the bombing of Palestinian targets in the Gaza Strip
during his training on Israeli Air Force F-35 fighters. Cohen, the
journalist who made the claims, also accused Dubai’s Deputy Chairman of
Police and Public Security, General Dhahi Khalfan, of being complicit in
assassinating Hamas leader Mahmoud Mabhouh in Dubai in 2010.
In June, an exposé by the New Yorker revealed that Israel and the UAE
have been engaged in secret normalisation talks since the 1990s. The
report disclosed that “the secret relationship between Israel and the
UAE can be traced back to a series of meetings in a nondescript office
in Washington D.C. after the signing of the Oslo Accords”. These
meetings discussed the possibility of the UAE purchasing F-16 fighter
jets from the US which are known to be comprised of Israeli technology.
The Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Mohammed Bin Zayed, also gave his
blessing for delegations of influential American Jews to be brought to
Abu Dhabi to meet with Emirati officials and establish an
intelligence-sharing relationship.
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