Israel UAE | Business Guide | 2021

A s Founding Partner of iAngels, a venture capital firm and investment platform that bridges the gap for international investors to take part in the ever- growing Israeli startup scene, I, along with my two partners, joined a 300 -person delegation of Israeli business executives to Dubai this past December. This was my first visit to the UAE, aswell asmy father-in-law’s, David Assia, who is also Chairman of our iAngels board. For David, who grew up between Geneva and Tel Aviv to an Iraqi father from Baghdad, visiting Dubai felt like “coming home to long lost cousins.” Reliving the memories of his father, a self-made businessman and financier, credited with building the first payment infrastructure between Europe and Israel, David sharedwithme the similarities he felt of the warmth, energy and humor embodied in the people of Dubai. It was an atmosphere of welcome and comfort, so similar to that of the Israeli people. This feeling of coming home serves only to stimulate our desire to continue working alongside the people of the UAE to lay the building blocks of business cooperation between our two countries. Only a few short months ago, the entirety of the geopolitical situation in themiddle east was forever altered when the UAE and Israel signed the Abraham Accords normalizing relations between the two countries. No longer does an Israeli traveler need act surreptitiously, now one can expect to encounter Israeli families parading around Dubai’s mall, see advertisements for UAE/ Israel Summits, hear conversations in Hebrew floating out of the Palm, Worlds Colliding: The Triangle between Europe, Israel and the UAE and dine at a kosher restaurant set inside theworld’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa. Though groundbreaking in its visibility, tourism is but a piece of the collaborationweaving a thread between Israel and the UAE, bringing the two nations together. In 1994 , then ForeignMinister Shimon Peres addressed the world from Amman at the signing of the peace treaty between Israel and Jordan. “We were born as sons of Abraham. Now we have to become brothers in the family of Abraham.” Expectations ran high that a new dawn was breaking but, alas, theworldwould have towait over a quarter of a century to see such history again in the Middle East. Yet patience pays, and onAugust 13 , 2020 , the region returned to its Abrahamic roots as theUAE andBahrain became the third and fourthArab countries to open diplomatic relationswith Israel. The feedback from our meetings in theUAEwas unwavering: the business community is driven by trust and long- term relationships, and the interest is not simply for UAE investors to invest in Israeli technology. The UAE has ambitions to become the startup nation of the region; emulating their Abrahamic brothers in Israel and the country’s innovation economy. Their interest lies in partneringwith Israeli startups in an effort to introduce Israeli technology to the UAE, as well as the larger GCC, for which they explained their role and ability to act Together We Can Change the Face of the Region | Mor Assia Israel-UAE > Business Guide > 2021 32 > High-Tech & Innovation > iAngels