Episode Details

Five years after the Abraham Accords, the Israel-UAE relationship is a study in contradictions. Over sixty weekly flights connect Tel Aviv to Dubai and Abu Dhabi — more than to London — and bilateral non-oil trade has hit $2.5 billion. But public support in the UAE has actually declined since 2020, and the warmth index is trending down. In this episode, we examine what the aviation numbers, trade composition, tourism asymmetry, and security cooperation reveal about whether the Accords produced something genuinely different from the cold peace with Egypt and Jordan — and what lessons this holds for Saudi normalization.