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History Made! – Israel Signs 1st Ever Free Trade Pact with Arab State

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Edited by: TJVNews.com

History was made on Tuesday as Israel and the United Arab Emirates signed a free trade agreement, which just happens to be the first of its kind that Israel has concluded with an Arab country.

Al Jazeera reported that the pact was signed in Dubai by Israel’s Minister of Economy and Industry Orna Barbivai and her counterpart, UAE Minister of Economy Abdulla bin Touq al-Marri after months of negotiations.

Also on Tuesday, Al Jazeera reported that Israel’s Ambassador to the UAE, Amir Hayek, posted on Twitter the word: “Done.” He was replying to another tweet he posted earlier saying “the UAE and Israel will sign FTA in the next hour”.

President of the UAE-Israel Business Council Dorian Barak said the trade agreement defined tax rates, imports and intellectual property, which would encourage more Israeli companies to set up offices in the UAE, particularly in Dubai.

The Council predicts there will be almost 1,000 Israeli companies working in or through the UAE by the end of the year, doing business with South Asia, the Far East and the Middle East.

Last week, Dr. Al Zeyoudi said bilateral trade between the UAE and Israel increased to more than $2.5 billion in less than two years after the Abraham Accords was signed.

The Associated Press reported that the UAE agreed to normalize relations with Israel in a U.S.-brokered deal in 2020, the first in the series of Abraham Accords that Israel eventually concluded with four Arab nations. Since then, the two countries have boosted cooperation in a number of economic sectors, according to the AP report.

The Abraham Accords were crafted by former President Trump’s senior advisor and son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Also playing pivotal roles in making the Abraham Accords come to fruition was former US Ambassador to Israel, David Friedman and Kushner associate, Avi Berkowitz.

The AP reported that Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett tweeted on Tuesday that, “Israel & the UAE just signed a historic Free Trade Agreement – the first of this scope to be signed between Israel & an Arab state. This was the fastest FTA to be signed in Israel’s history.”

Mohamed Al Khaja, the UAE ambassador to Israel, called it “an unprecedented achievement,” as was reported by the AP. He took to Twitter as well to express his feelings about this historic and momentous occasion.  Al Khaja tweeted: “Businesses in both countries will benefit from faster access to markets and lower tariffs as our nations work together to increase trade, create jobs, promote new skills and deepen cooperation.”

The report also indicated that president of the UAE-Israel Business Council, Dorian Barak, predicted that bilateral trade would exceed $2 billion this year, rising to $5 billion in the next five years. Al Jazeera reported that Barak said that the trade agreement defined tax rates, imports and intellectual property, which would encourage more Israeli companies to set up offices in the UAE, particularly in Dubai.

“Dubai is fast becoming a hub for Israeli companies that look to South Asia, the Middle East and the Far East as markets for their goods and services,” Barak said, according to the AP report.  “Nearly 1,000 Israeli companies will be working in and through the UAE by year’s end. It’s unprecedented.”

Barak added: “The domestic market doesn’t represent the entirety of the opportunity. The opportunity is really setting up in Dubai, as many companies have, in order to target the broader region,” as was reported by Al Jazeera.

Israel and the UAE have grown closer since they signed a deal to normalize relations, known as the Abraham Accords Photo Credit: Haim Zach/Israel Government Press Office via AP]

Ahead of the signing, Israel’s economy ministry had said the accord would remove tariffs on 96% of goods, including food, agriculture, cosmetics, medical equipment and medicine. Al Jazeera reported that the UAE has predicted that the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, as the accord is known, would boost bilateral trade to more than $10B a year within five years.

“Our agreement will accelerate growth, create jobs and lead to a new era of peace, stability, and prosperity across the region,” the Emirati trade minister, Thani al-Zeyoudi, said on Twitter, as was reported by Al Jazeera.

On Monday, Israel’s Barbivai said: “Together we will remove barriers and promote comprehensive trade and new technologies, which will form a solid foundation for our common path, will contribute to the well-being of citizens and make it easier to do business.”

Israel has more limited commercial relations with neighboring Jordan and Egypt, Arab countries that signed peace treaties with Israel decades ago, according to the AP report.

In the years leading up to the Abraham Accords, Israel had steadily increased cooperation with Gulf Arab states like the UAE, which share its security concerns about Iran’s burgeoning development of nuclear weapons.

Supporters of the accords view them as an historic breakthrough in Mideast diplomacy. The AP reported that the Palestinians rejected the accords as a betrayal of their cause because they shattered a longstanding Arab consensus that any normalization with Israel should come in exchange for progress in the long-defunct peace process.

The geo-political cauldron that has become synonymous with the turbulent region of the world known as the Middle East and in particular, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, did not escape notice by the UAE when the agreement was signed.

On Monday, the UAE foreign ministry issued a statement condemning what they perceive as the storming of the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem on Sunday by “extremist settlers under the protection of Israeli forces”.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog meets with Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (Photo: Government Press Office)

Tensions also soared on Sunday in Jerusalem as over 50,000 Israelis and Jews from all over the globe joined together in a massive celebration of the liberation of Jerusalem in 1967 from Jordanian occupying forces.

Al Jazeera reported that in a written statement, the UAE foreign ministry also asked “Israeli authorities to take responsibility for reducing escalation and ending all attacks and practices that lead to the continuation of tensions while underscoring the need to exercise maximum restraint to avoid further instability”.

Speaking on Israeli radio on Tuesday, Barbivai told the listening audience that she had heard “nothing out of the ordinary” about the Al-Aqsa Mosque violence so far during her visit to the UAE, as was reported by Al Jazeera.

The report also indicated that for the UAE the deal that was signed with Israel is the Gulf country’s second bilateral free trade agreement. Al Jazeera reported that in February of this year, the UAE signed a similar accord with India. Currently, the UAE is in bilateral trade talks with several other countries, including Indonesia and South Korea, according to the Al Jazeera report.

The UAE has been aggressively pursuing these deals in a bid to strengthen its economy and status as a major business hub following the deleterious financial situation that was brought upon by the coronavirus pandemic.

On April 1st of this year, Economy and Industry Minister Maj.-Gen. (Ret.) Orna Barbivay and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Minister of State for Foreign Trade Dr. Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi, announced the conclusion of negotiations on a comprehensive bilateral free trade agreement. Photo Credit: GPO/Gideon Sharon

In addition to Israel and the UAE establishing ties in September 2020, other countries in the region such as Morocco and Bahrain also recognized the legitimacy of Israel.

In an interview with the Calcalist web site on Tuesday, Ulrich Homann, a Corporate Vice President in the Cloud and AI business at Microsoft, said during a recent trip to Israel that,  “Israel earned the nickname ‘Startup Nation’ and I’m always pleased to discover what’s new in the Israeli startup scene, and how Microsoft’s cloud operations can help startups develop and grow faster.”

World Israel News reported that Homann works closely with Scott Guthrie, who serves as Microsoft’s Executive Vice President of the Cloud and AI group. He arrived in Israel to hold a series of meetings with local startups that sparked his interest. Homann has been working at Microsoft for 30 years.

“I began working there before we launched our first Windows operating system. When I joined, the program was on the horizon but wasn’t being sold yet. I worked with all of Microsoft’s current and former CEOs: I really loved Bill (Gates), Steve (Ballmer) was interesting, but maybe not everyone’s cup of tea. And Satya (Nadella) was everyone’s favorite. He’s also eloquent, considerate, his empathy is genuine, and of course, he’s super smart.”

In terms of conducting business, both Israel and the UAE are on the same page as it pertains to keeping the Iranian nuclear threat at bay in an ever-increasing aggressive environment.

On Tuesday, World Israel News reported that Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett publicly revealed documents which he said proved that the Iranian government had crafted a cover story about its rogue nuclear program for a watchdog agency, adding that he can prove Iran has been consistently lying to the international community about its nuclear development.

WIN reported that in a video released by his office on Tuesday morning, Bennett began the video by addressing Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian’s claim that allegations of Iran spying on the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) were “Zionist lies.”

“Spreading lies? Come on. I’m holding the proof of your lies right here in my hands,” Bennett said, according to the WIN report. He then shuffled documents which he said were classified Iranian intelligence ministry papers obtained by Israel.

“You see, after Iran stole classified documents from the UN’s Atomic Agency, Iran used that information to figure out what the atomic agency was hoping to find, and then created cover stories and hid evidence to evade their nuclear probes. So how do we know this? Because we got our hands on Iran’s deception plan a few years back. And it’s right here in my hands. Here it is, in the Persian language, hundreds of pages marked with the stamp of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence, ” Bennett declared.

The Abraham Accords were crafted by former President Trump’s senior advisor and son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Also playing pivotal roles in making the Abraham Accords come to fruition was former US Ambassador to Israel, David Friedman and Kushner associate, Avi Berkowitz. In this September 2020 photo that was taken from the White House balcony, on the far left is former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. To his right are former President Donald Trump, Bahrain Foreign Minister Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa and United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

In 2018, Israeli operatives from the Mossad intelligence agency pulled off a daring raid of a Tehran warehouse, spiriting critical papers about Iran’s nuclear program out of the country, as was reported by WIN.

Bennett noted that the papers contained notes by prominent nuclear scientist and former Iranian Defense Minister Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who is widely believed to have been assassinated by Israel in November 2020.

“Sooner or later they (referring to the atomic agency) will ask us — and we’ll need to have a comprehensive cover story for them,” Bennett quoted Fakhrizadeh, as was reported by WIN.

“Iran lied to the world, Iran is lying to the world again right now, and the world must make sure that Iran doesn’t get away scot-free.”

After the video was released, Bennett tweeted a link to the Iranian intelligence documents and invited the public to view them. WIN reported that the revelation comes as nuclear talks between Iran and the West in Vienna appear doomed to fail.

(Sources: AP, Al Jazeera, Calcalist, World Israel News)

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