Normalization deals were about preventing annexation, UAE ambassador says

The United Arab Emirates ambassador to the US said that the normalization agreement which UAE signed with ‘Israel’ in September was primarily “about preventing annexation.”
Yousef al-Otaiba said that while many had sought to cast the agreement in different lights to suit their own narrative, for him it was mostly about stopping Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s controversial plan to extend Israeli sovereignty to large parts of the West Bank.
Speaking on a Zoom panel hosted by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Al-Otaiba said, “The truth is that the Abraham Accords were about preventing annexation. The reason it happened, the way it happened, at the time it happened was to prevent annexation.”
He also recalled conversations with senior White House officials last year during which he tried to explain to them that Arab frustration over annexation would not blow over as it had with US President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.
“It is going to have a profoundly negative impact on the region, specifically on our friends in Jordan, on the rest of us who have begun opening up with Israel. It’s going to have a negative impact on America and I think on Israel,” he continued.
Otaiba said this concern led him to pen an op-ed in the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth last June, detailing his concerns and specifying how annexation would threaten the possibility of Israeli ties with the Arab world.
“For me as the guy who negotiated this deal, this was really about stopping annexation and saving the two-state solution.”
He also said that the UAE would be willing to support and participate in a peace plan, but that one would have to be presented first, seemingly dismissing the proposal made by the Trump administration last year.
‘Israel’ normalized ties with the UAE last September, a move that was followed by Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco.
Palestinians condemned the normalization agreements, saying they encouraged Israel’s denial of their rights and do not serve the Palestinian cause.