UAE National Council Delegation Visits Israel’s Parliament

Three members of the United Arab Emirates Federal National Council visited Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, on Monday – the first such delegation to Israel’s Jerusalem-based legislature since the two states normalized ties with the signing of the Abraham Accords in 2020. The Federal National Council is a 40-member advisory quasi-parliamentary body. Delegation members included Ali Rashid Al-Nuaimi, Sara Falaknaz and Marwan Almheiri. “When we talk about Abraham Accords agreements, we want you to look at the big picture,” said Nuaimi, chairman of the council’s Defense, Interior and Foreign Affairs Committee, at a meeting of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. “It’s not a political agreement only, it’s not an issue related to security and defense issues. No, it is an agent of change for the whole region,” Nuaimi said. Before arriving at the Knesset, the delegation visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and museum, also in Jerusalem. Nuaimi said that after the May 2021 Israel-Palestine crisis, which saw Israel exchange fire with Hamas and other armed groups in the Gaza Strip over a period of two weeks, “people were questioning what will happen to the Abraham Accords. I want everyone to know there is no way back; we are moving forward, we are not repeating history, we are writing history.” Ram Ben-Barak, chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, said, “There’s a misconception, as though the normalization agreement was based on just one element, of shared threats and challenges, but that’s the smallest part of the deal. Israel is committed to the agreement and plans on enhancing and expanding it in all fields.”