The repercussions of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s surprise visit to the United Arab Emirates on Sunday, 27 September 2026, continue to reverberate across the region, fuelling debate over its timing and implications at a particularly sensitive moment for Tel Aviv and Netanyahu himself.
Beyond the messages conveyed by the visit, much of the controversy has centred on media reports claiming that representatives from several Arab countries, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Libya, participated in a meeting between Netanyahu and UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed.
If confirmed, such participation would carry significant political and security implications.
Israel’s Channel 14, which is considered close to Netanyahu, claimed on Tuesday evening, 29 September, that his meeting with bin Zayed in Abu Dhabi took place in two stages. The first was reportedly a bilateral meeting, while the second expanded to include representatives from several countries, with the channel claiming that ten states were represented in total.
Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt denied reports that they had participated in the meeting. Channel 14, however, cited an unnamed Emirati source as saying representatives from those countries had attended and that discussions focused on strengthening security and intelligence cooperation and developing a regional framework to confront what the source described as “shared threats”.
Regardless of whether those representatives were actually present, the leaks themselves raise broader questions, particularly given the existing direct and indirect contacts between Tel Aviv and several Arab capitals.
Why was such information circulated at this particular moment? Is Israel testing the prospects for deeper integration into the Arab regional order?
An even more consequential question concerns what Israel may be offering Gulf states in exchange for greater openness towards it.
Could a new regional equation be taking shape in which Israel provides security, intelligence and military support against Iran and the Houthis in return for widening normalisation or reducing political tensions with Tel Aviv, even where full diplomatic normalisation remains politically difficult?
And what role is the UAE seeking to play in advancing such an arrangement?
A Systematic Narrative, But to What End?
The repeated circulation of these claims across several Israeli media outlets cannot be separated from the broader political context surrounding Netanyahu’s visit.
His reception in Abu Dhabi came after a striking scene at the United Nations General Assembly, where delegations from several countries walked out during his speech. Against that backdrop, the UAE visit could be understood as an attempt to counter perceptions of Israel’s growing international isolation and ease some of the mounting pressure on the Israeli occupation government.
The Emirati move is also difficult to separate from Israel’s domestic political calculations, particularly with elections scheduled for the end of October.
Netanyahu and his government face considerable criticism from opposition forces and sections of Israeli society, including accusations that his policies have deepened Israel’s international isolation and mishandled several major files.
From this perspective, reports that representatives of Arab countries joined Netanyahu and Mohammed bin Zayed in Abu Dhabi would serve Netanyahu politically regardless of whether every detail is accurate.
The narrative offers an image sharply different from one of diplomatic isolation. Instead, it suggests that Israel remains capable of communicating and coordinating with Arab governments and sitting with them at the same table to discuss common regional issues.
If Arab representatives were indeed present, Netanyahu could seek to use the meeting domestically as evidence that he retains regional relevance and remains capable of maintaining channels with Arab capitals.
That message could have particular resonance during an election campaign in which his opponents accuse him of weakening Israel’s international standing and deepening its isolation.
Denials Do Not Mean the Absence of Contacts
Saudi Arabia, Jordan and later Egypt denied, in one form or another, that their representatives had participated in the Abu Dhabi meeting.
Those denials, however, do not necessarily mean that political and security communication between Israel and Arab governments is absent.
Over recent years, numerous occasions have revealed varying degrees of contact and understandings between Tel Aviv and Arab capitals, including some of the states named in the Israeli media reports concerning the Abu Dhabi meeting.
A substantial portion of those contacts has remained outside public view, whether through back channels or undeclared communication.
The preference for secrecy is linked to several considerations, foremost among them avoiding political embarrassment before Arab publics, large sections of which continue to oppose normalisation in its different forms.
There is also an interest in separating limited security or political coordination on specific issues from the establishment of openly declared relations or full political normalisation.
Nevertheless, recent years have witnessed both acknowledged and unacknowledged contacts between Israeli officials and Arab political figures.
What stood out this time was the UAE’s official acknowledgement that it had received Netanyahu in Abu Dhabi.
Whether that announcement came in response to Israeli leaks that preceded disclosure of the visit, or reflected an Emirati willingness to move parts of the relationship from closed channels into public view, the episode marked a notable display of UAE-Israel relations.
Further uncertainty was created by the absence of a decisive Emirati response to reports alleging that other Arab representatives were present.
As host, Abu Dhabi could have directly confirmed or denied those claims. Its silence left open further questions about the nature of the meetings and the extent of participation.
That leads to a broader issue: what role does the UAE intend to play in the coming period?
What Does the UAE Want?
The UAE’s latest engagement with Israel suggests an approach that may extend beyond conventional bilateral relations and towards more interconnected regional arrangements in which Tel Aviv plays a role, particularly in relation to Iran and regional security.
Seen from this perspective, Abu Dhabi’s role may extend beyond acting as a conventional intermediary between Israel and Arab governments interested in expanding their contacts with it.
The UAE may seek to consolidate its position as a regional link capable of managing channels of communication and understandings between Tel Aviv and several Arab actors across files ranging from Gaza and Yemen to the Red Sea, the Horn of Africa and potentially broader Gulf security arrangements.
This comes at a time when the region faces several overlapping challenges, including confrontation involving Iran, threats from the Houthis and the security of maritime navigation through the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab Strait.
These issues feature prominently in the calculations of Israel, Gulf governments and other Arab states.
Abu Dhabi may therefore seek to use these shared security concerns as a foundation for wider political and security understandings that bring Israel and Arab countries together on selected files without necessarily producing a formal or publicly declared alliance in the immediate future.
In that sense, the Emirati calculation may extend beyond deepening its own relations with Israel.
It could also involve using those ties to strengthen Abu Dhabi’s position within regional security arrangements and recover greater influence over regional files, drawing on its capacity to communicate simultaneously with competing actors.
Normalisation in Exchange for Iran: Re-engineering the Abraham Model
Current indicators point towards the possible emergence of a regional formula in which the UAE serves as a bridge between different parties.
Such a formula would centre on expanding cooperation between Israel and Gulf states over concerns relating to Iran and the Houthis in exchange for greater room for engagement with Tel Aviv.
That engagement would not necessarily require immediate political or diplomatic normalisation. It could begin through security and intelligence cooperation outside conventional official frameworks.
The model under discussion appears closer to a flexible regional security network than to a formal military alliance resembling a “Middle East NATO”.
A number of shared interests and perceived threats could provide the foundation for such an arrangement.
From this perspective, Israel could offer its intelligence capabilities, air defence technologies, surveillance systems and early warning infrastructure as an entry point for greater security coordination with Gulf states.
As such cooperation develops, economic and political relations could gradually expand.
Countries that remain reluctant to embrace full normalisation, or regard its domestic and political cost as too high, could initially restrict their engagement to limited security contacts or a reduction in political tensions without establishing full diplomatic relations.
The UAE’s close relationship with Israel, combined with its network of Gulf and Arab relationships, gives Abu Dhabi room to manoeuvre between different actors.
It may therefore seek to capitalise on concerns surrounding maritime routes, energy security and confrontation with Iran and the Houthis to promote some form of Israeli-Arab cooperation, whether through an openly declared framework or through undeclared security coordination.
The potential strategy, therefore, may not depend on announcing a new regional alliance.
Instead, it could seek to build overlapping security interests that gradually make cooperation with Israel more acceptable and practical for some regional governments, opening the way to broader forms of engagement while reducing tensions that have intensified in recent years as a result of Israel’s policies and actions across the region.
A Gift to Israel
A potential Emirati role in restructuring cooperation between Israel and regional states could offer Tel Aviv substantial political, security and logistical gains.
Among the most important would be the opportunity to present Iran once again as a common regional threat rather than solely an Israeli adversary.
Within such a framework, Israel could attempt to reposition itself before Gulf states as a security partner with capabilities that can be employed against common challenges, rather than merely as one side in the traditional Arab-Israeli conflict.
Such a repositioning could also pave the way for deeper Israeli involvement in regional defence infrastructure through surveillance and early warning systems, intelligence-sharing, air defence coordination and the interception of missiles and drones.
This would strengthen Israel’s ability to embed itself within regional security structures.
If the process developed further, it could also increase regional pressure on Iran and its allies while gradually expanding forms of cooperation that began under the Abraham Accords, initially through security arrangements and potentially later through broader political or diplomatic relationships.
Yet significant obstacles remain.
The continuing war and its repercussions in Gaza, escalating settler violence in the occupied West Bank and continuing tensions across other regional fronts all increase the political cost of any openly declared Arab rapprochement with Israel.
These factors constrain efforts to transform limited security cooperation into a broad and stable regional structure.
Any Emirati attempt to promote a new regional framework would therefore remain caught within a complex equation.
On one side are security interests that may encourage some governments to increase coordination with Israel. On the other is the considerable political and popular cost imposed by the Palestinian question and the continuation of the conflict.
Between these competing pressures, Abu Dhabi may seek to use its position as an intermediary to expand its regional influence.
Its ability to do so, however, will depend on whether the different actors can reconcile their security calculations with the political sensitivity surrounding relations with Israel across the Arab world.
The region may ultimately be entering another phase in the restructuring of its political map, driven by rapidly changing alignments and overlapping security challenges.
Such changes could encourage approaches that depart from longstanding Arab political positions in favour of more pragmatic calculations based on security and mutual interests.
With countries such as the UAE participating in this process, Israel’s integration into wider regional arrangements could accelerate, not merely through formal diplomatic normalisation, but through deeper and increasingly interconnected security, economic and intelligence relationships.
The central question, therefore, is whether the region is moving beyond the debate over normalisation itself and towards a more complex stage in which Israel is increasingly incorporated into regional security partnerships.
