Trump said he expects more countries to “follow the lead of the United Arab Emirates.”
President Donald Trump said Thursday in a surprise announcement that Israel and the United Arab Emirates had agreed to normalize relations and that, as part of the deal, Israel would not annex parts of the West Bank that currently occupies it.
“Israel and the United Arab Emirates will completely normalize their diplomatic relations,” Trump said, surrounded by Oval Office staff. “They will exchange embassies and ambassadors and begin cooperation across the board and across a wide range of areas, including tourism, education, health care, trade and security.”
In a joint statement, Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and UAE ruler Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan said the “historic diplomatic breakthrough will promote peace in the Middle East region” . “
Delegations from Israel and the UAE “will meet in the coming weeks to sign bilateral agreements on investment, tourism, direct flights, security, telecommunications, technology, energy, health care, culture, the environment, the establishment of reciprocal embassies, and other areas of mutual benefit, “the leaders said in the statement, released Thursday morning.
“Now that the ice has broken, I expect more Arab and Muslim countries to follow the lead of the United Arab Emirates,” Trump said.
While the president praised the deal as a “peace agreement”, the UAE briefly stopped using that terminology and stressed instead the fact that Israel had promised not to annex parts of the West Bank. Netanyahu had expected to do so in recent months, using a peace proposal issued by the White House earlier this year to support the movement – which had drawn condemnation around the world.
In his first comment on the agreement, Prince Mohammed wrote on Twitter that “an agreement was reached to stop further Israeli annexation of Palestinian territories.”
“The UAE and Israel have also agreed to cooperate and establish a roadmap for establishing a bilateral relationship,” the Crown Prince added.
Israel has formal diplomatic ties with just two other Arab countries, Egypt and Jordan, with which it signed peace treaties in 1979 and 1994, respectively.
But it has also come to cooperate in recent years with Arab states of the Gulf, including the UAE – unofficially – largely on security issues related to what they see as a shared enemy in Iran.
In their joint statement Thursday, leaders Israel and the UAE said they would “immediately expand and accelerate cooperation on the treatment and development of a coronavirus vaccine.”
At the White House, Trump called the agreement “historic” and said it would be called the Abrahamic Accord, which the US ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, declared was intended to signal “the potential for unity” among Muslims, Jews and Christians.
“I wanted the Donald J. Trump agreement to be called, but I did not think the press would understand that,” Trump said, laughing at his aides. “I did not do that.”
Asked if he supported Israel in annexing Palestinian land, Trump said “we are talking to Israel today about that”, without elaborating.
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