Last week, the United Arab Emirates gave Israel formal permission to establish a diplomatic office in Abu Dhabi under the auspices of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), a multilateral body with 144 member states. Although officials from both governments have been at pains to note that the office is solely intended to facilitate Israel’s membership in the agency, which is headquartered in Abu Dhabi, the announcement should be seen in the context of improving Israeli-Gulf relations.

Israeli diplomats have been attending IRENA meetings in Abu Dhabi for several years, but now they will be entitled to have an office and live there permanently as well. Given the continued lack of formal Israeli-UAE diplomatic relations, such access might seem comparable to Iran having a UN mission in New York City despite its lack of diplomatic relations with the United States. But the IRENA arrangement is much more significant, despite the cautious official words, the UAE media’s apparent desire to limit the story’s prominence, and official censorship that limits what Israel-based media can say about certain subjects, including relations with Arab states. In fact, the new office is Israel’s second diplomatic presence in a Persian Gulf country, joining a discreet consulate whose existence (though not location) was revealed in a 2013 Israeli budget document, apparently by accident.

While Israeli trade with Gulf Arab states continues to grow and in some cases is substantial, political ties ebb and flow. In 2010, for example, the UAE was infuriated by the reported Israeli assassination of a Hamas gunrunner in Dubai (see “Israel-GCC Ties Twenty-Five Years After the First Gulf War”). Yet any Emirati concerns about the recent violence in the West Bank seem to have been trumped by shared Israeli-Gulf unease over Iran, especially since the P5+1 nuclear accord was agreed in July. The challenge represented by the Muslim Brotherhood is likely another area of agreement between Jerusalem and the UAE.

Read the article in full at the Washington Institute.