Former ambassador to Turkey Eitan Na’eh will be Israel’s top diplomat in the United Arab Emirates, a source in the Foreign Ministry said Tuesday.
He will be the first Israeli diplomat officially and openly stationed in the UAE as Israel sets up its mission in Abu Dhabi, the capital. He is expected to arrive in the coming days.
Na’eh’s position as charge d’affaires is expected to be temporary until an ambassador is appointed, which likely will happen after the next government is formed following the March election.
He will work in a temporary Israeli mission while the Foreign Ministry sets up its embassy in the Gulf state following the Abraham Accords, the peace treaty between Israel and the UAE announced in August.
Israel already has a mission in Bahrain, the second country to join the Abraham Accords. It had been operating secretly before relations between the countries became public.
Na’eh was Israel’s ambassador in Ankara from 2016 to 2018. Turkey expelled him in 2018 to protest the number of Palestinian casualties when the IDF tried to stop rioters from crossing the border from Gaza into Israel. Israel has not had an ambassador to Turkey since then.
Relations between the UAE and Turkey have been tense in recent years, especially when Ankara supported Qatar in its diplomatic crisis with other Gulf states and the UAE supported Kurds in Syria. The Emirate of Abu Dhabi in 2019 recognized the Armenian Genocide.
Following the announcement of the Abraham Accords, the Turkish Foreign Ministry accused the UAE of “hypocritical behavior” and “a betrayal to the Palestinian cause for its own narrow interests.”