Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, met in 2018 with the now-deceased Sultan Qaboos bin Said of Oman.
Photo: Israeli Prime Minister's Office/Associated PressBEIRUT—The diplomatic breakthrough between Israel and the United Arab Emirates caps more than a quarter-century of deepening—but largely secret—business and security ties between the two countries that signals a major shift in the geopolitics of the Middle East.
A major driver bringing the Israelis and Emiratis together has been their shared distrust of Iran, which they view as a destabilizing force in the region, and their concern about its growing military capabilities. That drove increasing intelligence cooperation between the two, according to current and former U.S. officials.
Business connections also grew. Even though the two nations didn’t maintain direct air or telecommunications links, deals got done. It became possible to hear Israeli businessmen quietly speaking Hebrew in certain Dubai hotels.
“This was more or less something that has developed, I would say, organically” and in “many, many areas,” said Anwar Gargash, Emirati minister of state for foreign affairs. This week, he said, the establishment of diplomatic relations transformed it into “something tangible.”
Thursday’s agreement now paves the way for other Arab and Muslim nations that have warming relations with Israel, including Bahrain, Oman and Morocco, to follow the Emirati lead. Trump administration officials said they are cautiously optimistic that they will see similar steps by the end of this year.
Like the U.A.E., other Arab nations have quietly developed budding business, security and intelligence ties with Israel. Israeli businessmen have meetings with Saudi counterparts in Riyadh restaurants. In 2018, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a rare visit to Oman. Morocco is looking at opening up commercial flights with Israel. And last year, the foreign ministers of Bahrain and Israel had their first public meeting in Washington.
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Bahrain hailed the deal, but didn’t respond to request for comment about its own relations with Israel. U.S. officials said they expect Bahrain will be the next to follow the Emirati lead.
A tentative outreach from Israel to the U.A.E in the 1990s planted the first seeds from which the relationship grew, according to people familiar with the talks. Israeli diplomats quietly met with Emirati intermediaries to talk about the U.A.E.’s efforts to buy new F-16 fighters from America.
Then, as now, Israel was concerned about maintaining its military edge over its Middle East neighbors. After discussing the deal with Emiratis, Israel told the U.S. it wouldn’t object to the sale.
There have been ups and downs. Relations took a hit in 2009, when the U.A.E. denied a visa to Shahar Pe’er, one of Israel’s most celebrated tennis players, who was planning to compete in the Dubai Tennis Championships.
She would have been the first professional Israeli athlete to compete in the U.A.E., but the initiative was derailed after organizers said they couldn’t let an Israeli compete weeks after an Israeli military campaign in the Palestinian-populated Gaza Strip. Venus Williams condemned the Emirati visa denial and Andy Roddick withdrew from the tournament in protest.
A plane from the United Arab Emirates landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion International airport carrying medical aid for the Palestinians in June.
Photo: israel airport authority/ReutersThe next year, suspected Israeli assassins using fake passports killed a top Hamas leader at a Dubai. The killing threw relations into turmoil. The U.A.E. identified 11 suspects and sought international help in securing their arrest.
Despite these setbacks, Israeli and Emirati relations continued to deepen.
Emirati officials also bought sophisticated Israeli spyware, according to lawsuits filed against the company that created the hacking tools. The Emiratis were accused of using hacking tools to spy on domestic dissidents and rivals around the world. Emirati officials have denied those allegations.
Efforts to bring the unofficial Israeli-Emirati ties into the open gathered momentum when President Trump took office in 2017. Mr. Trump asked his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to spearhead Middle East policy for the White House. Mr. Kushner set out to bridge the divide between Israel and vital Arab neighbors, like the U.A.E.
Last year, the Trump administration organized a Middle East security conference in Warsaw that brought Mr. Netanyahu together with Arab leaders concerned about Iran’s regional ambitions.
The conference paved the way for the U.S. to broker secret talks between the U.A.E. and Israel, mostly focused on Iran. Israeli and Emirati negotiators met in Washington, Abu Dhabi and Israel, according to U.S. officials.
Emirati business leaders were also reaching out to Israel. The U.A.E. extended an invitation to Israel to take part in the 2020 Dubai Expo. Israel was planning to set up a pavilion to showcase technology and its eagerness to work with the Gulf. The event was postponed because of coronavirus fears.
At the same time, the Trump administration was looking to secure a regional nonaggression pact between Israel and the U.A.E., Bahrain, Oman and Morocco, the officials said. But the initiative never got much traction, so the Trump administration then turned its attention toward brokering individual deals with each country.
The U.A.E. in 2009 denied a visa to Israeli tennis player Shahar Pe’er to play in a tournament after an Israeli military campaign in the Gaza Strip.
Photo: Kamran Jebreili/ASSOCIATED PRESSThe pandemic provided an unexpected opening for Israeli-Emirati detente. Last May, the first commercial flight from the U.A.E. landed in Israel with 16 tons of emergency aid to help Palestinians battle Covid-19. Israel and the U.A.E. then announced that researchers in the two countries would work together to fight the virus.
In June, Yousef Otaiba, the influential Emirati ambassador in Washington, wrote an op-ed in an Israeli newspaper which carried an explicit warning for Israel that its plans to annex massive Jewish settlements in the West Bank would torpedo its hopes of official ties with its Arab neighbors by killing the prospect that the area would become part of a future Palestinian state.
“In the U.A.E. and across much of the Arab world, we would like to believe Israel is an opportunity, not an enemy,” he wrote. “We face too many common dangers and see the great potential of warmer ties.”
There followed a new round of talks that produced Thursday’s breakthrough, in which Israel agreed to suspend plans to annex parts of the West Bank in return for a plan to normalize relations with the U.A.E.
—Stephen Kalin in Riyadh and Michael Bender in Washington contributed to this article.
Write to Dion Nissenbaum at dion.nissenbaum@wsj.com
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