Israelis are visiting Dubai in the tens of thousands. Where in the past, they could only arrive as undercover spies, competitive athletes or foreign passport holders, now they are loud and proud, running into the arms of their new Middle Eastern friend, the oil-rich United Arab Emirates.
Since December, they have window-shopped among elaborate displays of gilded wedding garments, skied down the indoor slope at Dubai’s Mall of the Emirates and boasted of their meetings with Emirati businessmen.
We Israelis are very noisy, and they understand us … Here I feel good!” bellowed tour guide Lihi Ziv, wearing a sequined shirt and a blue scarf around her strawberry-red hair, seeing no reason to maintain a low profile as she wandered Dubai’s gold market last month.
“We are wanted,” said elementary school teacher Ilanit Zighelboim, as she toured the nearby spice market with friends.
Israel and the United Arab Emirates have promoted their U.S.-brokered deal for diplomatic relations as an historic peace deal, after decades in which Israel was isolated from many Arab nations. It’s the bear-hug that Israelis have always wanted from their Arab neighbors, leading many Israelis to redefine the very notion of peace and reconsider whether they need make any painful sacrifices to achieve it.
“Israel occupies our land. Israel continues to create settlements in our villages, destroys our houses…and yet it is we who have to treat Israel better? Who is it that should be doing what to whom? The occupied to the occupier?” said Nabil Shaath, advisor to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Palestinians and many countries in Europe and the West say real peace requires Israel to agree to the “land for peace” formula — ceding the occupied West Bank to the Palestinians in order to end their conflict. Shaath worries the UAE deal removes the incentive for Israel to do so, even if the Emiratis say they’ll keep pushing for it.
“The Israelis are the problem, not us, and the Emiratis are looking for excuses for what they have done,” Shaath said.
Some Palestinians do find perks in the new UAE deal. Those who are citizens of Israel — not from the West Bank or Gaza — are finally able to visit a part of the Arab world that had been off limits to them as Israeli passport holders.
“It was a dream, an impossible dream,” said Lobna Zobedat, after sandboarding down a desert dune on the outskirts of Dubai, the city she’d always wished to visit.
She hoped Israeli Jewish travelers to Dubai would see their Arab compatriots in a more positive light. Could it lead to less discrimination against her community at home, Zobedat wondered — or would it all just be forgotten on the flight back?
These questions lingered on a Dubai runway last month, as commotion broke out while an Israeli flight readied to depart for Tel Aviv.
Lihi Ziv, the tour guide, protested when a flight attendant tried to fill the empty row in front of her with a couple and their baby, Arab tourists from Israel. Another Arab couple called Ziv racist. Ziv insisted her concern had only to do with the coronavirus pandemic.
“Respect each other!” an Israeli flight attendant commanded. Passengers applauded.
“You all were just in an Arab country, not in Las Vegas,” a young Arab dad said in Hebrew. “Look at what is happening here. Disgusting.”
