‘Data is destiny,’ says UAE Ambassador to Washington
For the Middle East, data is the new oil, according to UAE Ambassador to Washington Yousef Al Otaiba.
Hailing the $1.5 billion AI deal Microsoft signed this month to invest in artificial intelligence with Abu Dhabi’s G42 company, Al Otaiba writes in a Bloomberg opinion piece that “governments must race to realize the technology’s potential – and limit its harm.”
The UAE, U.S. and other partners are working together on new regulatory frameworks to facilitate public-private sector collaboration on AI and ensure its ethical use, Al Otaiba writes, pledging hundreds of billions of dollars from his country for the effort.
At the same time, the world must not allow the massive amounts of energy needed for AI data centers to compromise climate priorities and the shift to renewable power, according to the ambassador.
“AI will be the lifeblood of future societies,” Al Otaiba writes. “To ensure that data is truly destiny in the new age, we must join together to promote AI’s ethical and equitable benefits for all.”
To crack Emirati market, CEOs line up for ‘speed-dating’ with Israel’s ambassador in Abu Dhabi
Bombarded by requests for personal assistance from startup executives hoping to launch operations in the United Arab Emirates, Israeli Ambassador Amir Hayek has developed a technique for identifying the winners and being candid with the rest.
“In one hour, I meet 11 companies,” said Hayek, Israel’s first ambassador to the oil-pumping Gulf state, whose first encounters often take place through a Zoom screen. “It’s speed-dating. Some I tell not to come, some I say if you make a little switch in your approach, you can meet Emirati needs, and some I say, run, because we are looking for the technology you’ve got.”
While the silver-haired, 58-year-old diplomat escorts Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and other Israeli officials in Abu Dhabi when they meet Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who acceded last month to become president of the UAE, it’s the business side of the job that lights him up. Since the Abraham Accords were signed on the White House lawn in September 2020, normalizing ties with the UAE and Bahrain, the Gulf states have become some of Israel’s biggest trade partners.
Hayek ticks off several reasons why the UAE offers a unique opportunity for Israeli companies: access to capital from some of the world’s biggest investment funds; a diverse expatriate workforce; its position as an international shipping and logistics hub; a government-led “infrastructure for innovation” that includes grants and tax incentives; and the country’s willingness to serve as a beachhead to markets in Arab and Islamic states that Israelis haven’t been able to reach before.
“You might find each and every one of these in another country, but combined, you can find them only in the UAE,” he said from Abu Dhabi in a Zoom interview with The Circuit.
Israel and the UAE signed a free-trade agreement in May that will eliminate customs duties from both countries on some 96 percent of goods, including food, agricultural products, cosmetics, medications and medical equipment. Last week, the Dubai International Chamber announced it will open a Tel Aviv office to help connect Emirati and Israeli businesses. Bilateral trade is projected to increase from $1 billion to $10 billion over the next five years.
Hayek, whose fluent Arabic comes from growing up in an Iraqi Jewish family that fled persecution in Baghdad in the 1950s, says the precarious state of Israel’s current coalition government won’t keep trade with the Gulf from growing. In April, Bennett lost his majority in the 120-seat parliament, and former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is gathering strength to make a comeback.
“Any Israeli government will support the Abraham Accords,” Hayek said. “Even if the government falls, you won’t see any gap.”
Similarly, he sees little chance that the UAE will pull out of the U.S.-brokered normalization deal it signed alongside Bahrain. Morocco and Sudan joined soon after. Hayek said he wasn’t ruffled when he was summoned to the Foreign Ministry in Abu Dhabi last month to hear the UAE’s official protest against Israel’s response to clashes with Palestinians at holy sites in Jerusalem.
“We had a good conversation,” he said. “You can tell one thing about the Emiratis – they don’t watch the movie from the middle. They play the movie from the beginning to the end. I trust that the Emiratis see the whole picture and understand what happened on the Temple Mount. No one wants anything bad to happen there and Israel is doing its best to keep the status quo. I hope we will not see those scenes again.”
The Palestinian Authority opposed the Abraham Accords and argues that Arab countries should reject normalization until a just solution is found to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Saudi Arabia, the biggest Arab economy, maintains that fairly addressing Palestinian concerns must precede establishing official ties with Israel. U.S. President Joe Biden is planning a Mideast trip to Israel and Saudi Arabia in July that may include a meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
By the end of 2022, the UAE-Israel Business Council expects that close to 1,000 Israeli companies will be operating inside the UAE – or through it to manage activities in the Middle East and Asia. The largest deal between the two countries was the 22% stake that Mubadala Petroleum bought in Israel’s offshore Tamar gas field from Delek Drilling for $1 billion in 2020. It may soon sell half of that to an Israeli investor.
The giant energy company is controlled by Mubadala Investment Co., an Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund, which has more than $230 billion in assets under management and has invested about $100 million in Israeli venture capital firms. OurCrowd, a Jerusalem-based funding platform for startups with multiple investments in the Gulf, was the first Israeli VC to open an office in the UAE that is licensed to operate in the Abu Dhabi Global Market financial center.
Hayek, a father of four, grew up in the Tel Aviv suburb of Petah Tikvah and graduated with an accounting degree from Tel Aviv University. He has held a series of senior positions in the Israeli government, including director-general of the Industry and Trade Ministry. Hayek was also at various points chief of the Israeli Export Institute, the Israel Manufacturers Association and the Israel Hotel Association.
“He’s a talented connector,” said Shalom Lipner, a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, who recalled that Hayek was invaluable when the Washington-based think tank organized its N7 conference in the Abu Dhabi desert last year, attracting senior officials from all the Arab countries that have official ties with Israel, including Egypt and Jordan.
“With his track record in business and government, Hayek has the right skill-set to manage the delicate details of bringing Arabs and Israelis together,” said Lipner, who was a policy advisor and strategist during his government career for seven Israeli prime ministers.
Hayek’s small staff in the UAE, supplemented by temporary personnel sent from Jerusalem, will grow this year to house one of the largest commercial delegations of any Israeli embassy in the world, he said. Among possible joint ventures are proposals for Emirati investment in Israeli energy exploration, rail projects, airports and seaports, he said. Israeli technology companies with the best chances of success in the UAE are involved with water conservation, energy, telemedicine, medical devices, agrotech, foodtech and fintech, according to Hayek. He also said he’s in frequent touch with his counterpart, Mohamed Al Khaja, the UAE ambassador to Israel.
“We didn’t come here for a 200-meter sprint and neither did the Emiratis,” he said. “We came to run the marathon. We came to build this right, to build the infrastructure, to let people get to know each other, to know each other’s manners, habits, way of doing business, and it takes time. We started very quickly and we are running faster every day.”
Israel’s first ambassador to Morocco is building people-to-people ties
This article first appeared on Jewish Insider.
When Israel’s newly installed ambassador to Morocco, David Govrin, recently addressed a gathering of young Israelis and Moroccans in Marrakesh, he summed up his first 14 months on the job by recalling a conversation with a local official: “He asked me if I’d encountered any problems so far; I told him I had one big problem,” Govrin joked. “The food is simply too good here.”
While there is no doubt that delectable and intoxicating Moroccan fare, which is also wildly popular in Israel thanks to the nearly half a million Jews of Moroccan heritage who reside in the Jewish state, might not be good for the waistline, Govrin told Jewish Insider in an interview last week that his answer was the truth – he has received a warm and genuine welcome since arriving in the Arab country in January 2021.
“There’s a lot of enthusiasm,” Govrin told JI. “We feel it and see it every day, the people here are genuinely very excited about Israel.”
Govrin became Israel’s first ambassador to Morocco just a month after the two countries agreed to establish full and open ties in December 2020, and has been working to both establish a fully functional diplomatic mission and build people-to-people ties that will enhance the already warm peace that is rapidly growing between the countries.
A veteran of Israel’s foreign service and a fluent Arabic speaker, Govrin understands the difference between a peace that is warm over one that is not. A former ambassador to Egypt, from 2016 to 2019 – Govrin also served as first secretary in Cairo between 1994-1997 – he said Israel’s relations with the two Arab states differ wildly.
“One has to bear in mind that Israel and Egypt have engaged in five wars, this is not the same for Israel and Morocco,” Govrin began, highlighting that powerful segments in Egyptian society – the Nasserists and the Islamists – have remained an obstacle to Egypt’s ability to develop better personal ties with Israel.
“There are also no cultural relations between Israel and Egypt,” he continued. “This is unfortunate because it is cultural relations that really bring people together.”
During his short time in Morocco, Govrin has focused on building those cultural and people-to-people relationships. From a young leaders’ seminar last month in Marrakesh to a Jewish women’s festival in the Mediterranean city of Tangiers to mark International Women’s Day, he said it has been easy.
“Before I arrived, my expectations were at a certain level,” Govrin admitted. “After arriving, however, I noticed that the reality was way beyond that. There’s so much enthusiasm and the people here are very excited and eager to visit Israel.”
Indeed, the new consular section, which did not exist before Govrin’s arrival, has received endless inquiries and requests from Moroccans wanting to visit Israel. Israeli airlines began direct flights to Morocco last summer, and the first Moroccan airline held its inaugural flight from Casablanca just over a week ago.
What sets Morocco apart from other Arab states, Govrin explained, is that “the Moroccan people fully understand the importance of the peace with Israel” and feel connected to Jews because of the community’s long presence in the country.
“They have a positive and forthcoming approach to Jews because the Jews were an integral part of Moroccan society, history and heritage for many centuries,” he continued. “This has helped us to push the relationship forward.”
Jews have had a permanent presence in Morocco for more than 2,000 years and with the arrival of Jews from Spain and Portugal – following their expulsion in 1492 – their impact in the country grew even further. Today, while the community has shrunk from an estimated 250,000 to 300,000 in the mid-20th century to only about 2,000 – most fleeing following waves of antisemitism after Israel’s creation – those still living in the country remain openly and actively Jewish.
“In Morocco, the Jewish presence was welcomed for many years by the kings, and [the current leader] King Mohammed VI is very supportive and encouraging as far as relations with Israel are concerned,” said Govrin. “And we have to bear in mind that leaders play a role in sending a message to their citizens.”
As for the thorny issue of Israel’s conflict with the Palestinian, which served been a point of contention for many Arab countries and prevented them from normalizing ties with Israel for decades, Govrin said the subject feels distant in Morocco. There were a handful of protests against the resumption of relations with Israel in December 2021, but following a recent national election in the country, the strongest voices opposed to normalization with the Jewish state – the Islamists – are now on the margins.
“Morocco’s foreign policy is led by the king and [since] the Islamists are no longer part of the governing coalition, their presence in parliament was greatly diminished, and as far as the relationship between Israel and Morocco goes, we feel that the majority of Moroccans are very much in favor of bilateral ties,” he said.
“The perception of the Palestinian issue changed here following the Arab Spring,” continued the ambassador, author of a 2016 book about the ideological upheaval caused by the wave of popular protests that swept the Arab world a decade ago. “People here are focused more on domestic issues and the Palestinian issue is just one of many other regional conflicts.”
“The Moroccan outlook is towards Europe and Africa,” Govrin continued, adding that “Moroccans invest most of their energy on improving the relationship with Europe and Africa.”
For Israel, Morocco is both a natural ally and a strategic asset exactly because it sits at the gateway to two continents, and, said Govrin, the Jewish state is utilizing the renewed relationship to expand cooperation on multiple levels – diplomatic, economic and cultural, as well as security cooperation.
In the short space of time since he arrived in Rabat, Morocco’s capital, he has already welcomed a slew of top Israeli officials from Foreign Minister Yair Lapid to Defense Minister Benny Gantz to Economy Minister Orna Barbivai. Visits that have paved the way for stronger and deeper cooperation, said Govrin.
“We’ve achieved a lot over the past year,” the ambassador finished, and while COVID-19 has hampered the process somewhat, he promised that a reciprocal visit by a top Moroccan official to Israel is likely to happen very soon.
