With the recent signing of the historic peace agreement, Israel and the UAE have taken steps in normalizing the ties between the 2 countries and formalizing a combined effort to research the COVID-19 pandemic. This could open ties between such industries as air travel, investment, security, telecommunications, and tourism. The world could soon be seeing cross-border ventures for doing business in UAE as well as Israel. All of this resulted from a landmark call that took place between Israel’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Gabi Ashkenazi and UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al Nahyan.
Company Alliances being formed
With the announcement of the peace agreement on August 13th, decades of hostility and opposition were finally set aside while promises were made to open ties in the industries above. For example, Etisalat (Emirates Telecommunications Corp,), the UAE’s largest phone company is in advanced talks with Partner Communications, the wireless operator of Israel. In addition to this, Israir Airlines Ltd. has applied for landing permits in the UAE. Finally, Israel’s TeraGroup has agreed to join forces with UAE-based APEX National Investment and research the Coronavirus.
Recent Stock Gains and other News
In other noteworthy news, the peace agreement has continued to reverberate through stock markets in the Middle East. For instance, Israel’s TA-35 was up as much as 2% while the indexes in Abu Dhabi and Dubai rose 0.6% and 1.3% respectively. Additionally, Stock indexes were up in other countries including Bahrain, Egypt, Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia.
According to the Times of Israel, a recent phone call took place between Bahrain’s Prime Minister and the chief of Israel’s spy agency Mossad. An Arabic-language news reporter for Israel tweeted that a future meeting between the two has been planned and may lead to a peace agreement between those two countries as well. Interestingly enough, Bahrain has denied that the phone call occurred while there was no comment from Israel’s Office of the Prime Minister.
