We are diplomats, representatives of our nations and agents of warming ties between the UAE and Israel. We believe in the power of our profession, that building trust through open and direct ties, combined with bold political leadership, can produce regional transformations.
Over these recent weeks, we now meet and talk often. Our conversations focus on growing economic ties, trade and tourism, health and educational exchanges and deepening people-to-people contacts. We facilitate and update each other on the near-daily announcements of new agreements between our universities, research institutes, start-ups and medical centres. Just last week, we recognised the joint partnership between the Mohamed Bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence and the Weizmann Institute of Science. We celebrated together the UAE space probe’s successful arrival at Mars and wondered about future Israeli-Emirati space co-operation and missions.
Last week, the UK Supreme Court ruled by a unanimous decision that Shamima Begum, who left the country as a teenager to join ISIS, was not allowed to return and fight for her citizenship case. In 2019, then home secretary Sajid Javid had stripped Begum, 19 at the time, of her citizenship on national security grounds, and she wished to return to challenge the decision. The Supreme Court decision does not simply speak to Begum’s case, however. Rather, it says a great deal more about our country and how we do or do not envisage citizenship in the 21st century. Very little of it is particularly edifying.
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The Biden administration is starting to implement a novel approach towards Iran, which is a key foreign policy priority. Last week’s US air strike in Syria demonstrates that the numerous commentators who claimed to fully understand US President Joe Biden s policy in advance have been jumping to unfounded conclusions. They appear to have been badly mistaken.
In 2016, former president Donald Trump made strident opposition to his predecessor Barack Obama s participation in the nuclear agreement between six major international powers and Iran a theme of his candidacy. With typical hyperbole he called it “horrible” and the worst deal in history .
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Much has been said and written about the global response to the unfolding crisis in Myanmar, where the long-dominant military staged a coup earlier this month. Experts have discussed the deep influence of neighbouring China, an important economic partner, and the likely impact of American sanctions on the strategic calculus of the South-East Asian nation s junta.
Others have focused on the sophisticated way the military brass orchestrated its coup against Aung San Suu Kyi s democratically elected government, with which it had shared power for half a decade.
Somewhat missing in the discussions, though, has been the role of Myanmar s influential neighbours and, more broadly, the Association of South-East Asian Nations (Asean), in legitimising the junta’s behind-the-scenes rule and atrocities in recent decades.