Israeli annexation of the West Bank would be ‘red line’ for UAE

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The United Arab Emirates warned Israel on Wednesday that any move to annex the occupied West Bank would constitute a “red line”, following Israeli ministers’ threats to take over most of the territory.

The warning is the strongest sign of the Gulf state’s mounting frustration with Israel’s 22-month war in Gaza and operations in the West Bank. The UAE was the most important of four Arab states to sign the so-called Abraham Accords that normalised ties with Israel in 2020.

“Annexation in the West Bank would constitute a red line for the UAE,” said Lana Nusseibeh, the foreign ministry’s assistant minister for political affairs, in a statement. “It would severely undermine the vision and spirit of Accords, [and] end the pursuit of regional integration.”

Hours earlier on Wednesday, Israel’s far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich had responded to European countries’ recognition of Palestinian statehood by calling for the annexation of 82 per cent of the West Bank. The move would leave more than 3mn Palestinians crammed into less than a fifth of the territory.

“The principle is maximum land with minimum Arabs,” Smotrich said.

The UAE has also been exasperated by Israel’s belligerence in the wider region, including its 12-day war with Iran, according to analysts and people familiar with Abu Dhabi’s thinking.

The Abraham Accords, which Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan also signed, were a key foreign policy triumph for the first Trump administration. It had hoped to emulate the success by brokering a peace deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia, the region’s largest economy and long viewed as the biggest prize for Israel. 

But the UAE’s signal that the original agreement is under strain is a further blow to US President Donald Trump’s hopes of expanding the deal. His administration’s entreaties to Riyadh have so far gone nowhere, and Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has criticised Israel’s 22-month war against Hamas in Gaza as a “genocide”.  

One of the UAE’s key demands when negotiating the Abraham Accords was that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rescind his threat to annex the West Bank. But Israeli officials have revived the threat in response to several European countries’ recent pledges to recognise Palestine. 

Nusseibeh called on Israel to “suspend” the fresh annexation plans. “We viewed the Accords as a way to enable our continued support for the Palestinian people and their legitimate aspiration for an independent state,” said

Palestinians regard the West Bank as the heart of a future state, but Israel has subjected the territory to military occupation since 1967.

Since Netanyahu returned to power in 2022 at the head of a coalition containing two far-right parties led by ultranationalist settlers, Israel has tightened its grip on the territory. It has approved a huge expansion of settlements — which are illegal under international law — and seized large swaths of land. 

Last month, the Israeli government advanced a controversial settlement plan in the so-called E1 block near Jerusalem. It would split the West Bank in two, and is widely viewed as a death knell for the hope of a contiguous Palestinian state.