AhlulBayt News Agency: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly made an unannounced, highly secretive visit to Abu Dhabi on Sunday to meet with UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, highlighting the accelerating military and political integration between the two regimes in the shadow of the US-Israeli war of aggression against Iran.
According to Israeli media reports and statements from a senior Israeli official to Reuters, Netanyahu flew to the Emirati capital on a private aircraft on Sunday morning, spent most of the day in closed-door meetings with the UAE president, and returned to the occupied territories later that evening.
Neither the Israeli prime minister's office nor the UAE's foreign ministry immediately commented on the trip.
Such a visit underscores a rapidly warming military alliance between the Israeli regime and the UAE, which has accelerated significantly since the outbreak of the US-Israeli war of aggression against Iran in late February 2026.
During the war, the Israeli regime reportedly took the highly unusual step of temporarily deploying an Iron Dome missile defense system, accompanied by Israeli operators, to the UAE.
This alignment was further displayed on the international stage last week.
The UAE was one of only two Arab countries, alongside Bahrain, whose representatives remained seated in the UN General Assembly hall during Netanyahu's recent address, while dozens of other delegates staged a walkout in protest of Israel's ongoing genocide in Gaza and its aggression against Iran.
Sunday was not Netanyahu’s first secret visit to the Gulf state during the ongoing regional conflict.
According to Reuters, a source familiar with the matter revealed that during "Operation Roaring Lion" earlier this year, the prime minister secretly traveled to the UAE and met with bin Zayed in the oasis city of Al-Ain on March 26.
At the time, the UAE publicly denied that the meeting had taken place after Netanyahu's office claimed a secret visit occurred.
The United Arab Emirates and the Israeli regime formally established diplomatic relations in 2020 under the US-brokered Abraham Accords, a normalization deal brokered during Donald Trump's first term.
Unlike previous peace treaties in the region, the UAE-Israeli normalization was not a peace between former belligerents, but rather the formalization of a strategic, intelligence, and economic alliance that had never been at war.
Abu Dhabi traded its historical support for Palestinian sovereignty for a security umbrella, access to advanced US weaponry, and a privileged channel to Washington.
However, this alliance remains deeply unpopular across the Arab and Islamic world.
The necessity of conducting such high-level meetings in absolute secrecy, using private jets and unannounced schedules, exposes the fragile and illegitimate nature of the normalization project in the eyes of regional public opinion, which remains overwhelmingly united in its support for the Palestinian resistance and its condemnation of Israeli regime crimes.
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