By Maher Chmaytelli
DUBAI (Reuters) – The President of the United Arab Emirates cancelled an economic boycott opposed to Israel, authorizing industrial and monetary agreements between countries in a key step towards general relations, the official UAE news firm reported Saturday.
Israel and the United Arab Emirates said on August 13 that they would normalize diplomacy in an agreement negotiated through U.S. President Donald Trump, which is reshaping the political order of the Middle East from the Palestinian factor to the opposite fight against Iran.
President Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan issued a decree abolishing a boycott law as a component of the “efforts of the United Arab Emirates to expand diplomatic and industrial cooperation with Israel, leading to bilateral cooperation by stimulating economic expansion and selling technological innovation,” said WAM news firm.
The announcement came as Israeli airline El Al Israel Airlines Ltd was preparing to operate the country’s first direct flight from Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport to the CAPITAL of the United Arab Emirates, Abu Dhabi.
A delegation from the Israeli government and Trump’s most sensitive aides, adding his senior adviser Jared Kushner, are scheduled on the flight on August 31, a U.S. official said.
Before the August thirteen agreement can be officially signed, major points will have to be agreed on issues such as the opening of embassies, industry and links.
Israeli television channel thirteen said that bilateral industry may, in the first place, be worth $4 billion a year, a figure he said could soon triple or quadruple. Government officials did not promptly verify this estimate.
Israeli Agriculture Minister Alon Schuster said Israel was implementing potential joint projects that could help the oil-rich Gulf nation’s food security, such as water desalination and crop cultivation in the desert.
“With your money and experience, we may go a long way,” he told Tel Aviv radio station 102 FM on Friday.
Officials from both countries recently said they were cooperating in the fields of defense, medicine, tourism and technology.
The decree announced on Saturday that citizens and businesses in the United Arab Emirates will not be able to do business with Israel.
The two countries do not yet have official air links, and it is unclear whether Monday’s El Al flight could fly over Saudi Arabia, which has no official ties to Israel, to reduce flight time.
In May, an Etihad Airways aircraft flew from the United Arab Emirates to Tel Aviv to deliver it to the Palestinians to fight the coronavirus, marking the first known flight of an airline from the United Arab Emirates to Israel.
(Additional report through Dan Williams in Jerusalem; edited through Helen Popper and Clelia Oziel)