Israeli Prime Minister Cancels Trip to the United Arab Emirates

Israel (in green) and the UAE (in orange) have greatly improved their relations in recent years. (Wikipedia)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu canceled his trip to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) because of a disagreement with Jordan over his flight plan on March 11. This incident came amid recently-strained relations between Israel and Jordan. 

Netanyahu’s office called off his planned visit to the UAE, citing difficulties in coordinating the flight over Jordanian airspace.

This marks the fourth time that Netanyahu’s trip to the UAE has been canceled. According to some commentators, the completion of such a trip would also have the potential of boosting Netanyahu’s diplomatic credentials ahead of Israel’s general elections later in March. The Prime Minister’s Likud party is expected to gain a majority of seats in the Knesset (Israel’s parliamentary body) but will need to enter in a coalition with other political parties to secure a governing mandate. The cancellation of Netanyahu’s trip to the UAE thus presents a blow to Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister.

The trip also represents a years-long thawing of relations between Israel and its Muslim neighbors. Last September, Israel established formal relations with both the UAE and Bahrain in its first normalization deals with Arab states in decades. The recent moves across the Arab world to establish ties with Israel arrive against the broader backdrop of tensions with Iran in the region. Iran’s identity as both a Persian and a majority-Shiite country incentivized neighboring countries into aligning with a broader coalition against Iran based on shared Arab ethnicity as well as having majority-Sunni populations.

Previously this week, Jordananian Crown Prince Hussein also canceled a trip to the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, Israel, one of Islam’s most sacred sites, over security disagreements. Jordan cited Israel’s last-minute security changes on the number of armed escorts as the primary reason for the cancellation of Hussein’s trip to the mosque. 

With the growing consensus of an anti-Iran alliance, many Arab states have either normalized relations with Israel or strengthened ties with each other through increased cooperation in security, agriculture, and other sectors. 

However, this latest incident between Israel and Jordan illustrates the fragility underpinning much of the Arab realignment against Iran. Oded Eran, a former Israeli ambassador to Jordan, observed the still-evident lack of trust between the two countries, saying, “The major problem is there is no dialogue between the No. 1’s in Jordan and Israel, that is to say between the prime minister and the king of Jordan.”