Israeli delegations bask in UAE glow, even as details few

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Another plane full of Israeli business people excited about their newfound access to the United Arab Emirates touched down in Dubai this week, the latest whirlwind trip seeking to cash in on a U.S.-brokered deal to normalize relations between the countries.

But like the normalization agreement itself, inked on the White House lawn last month to great fanfare, the steady stream of statements from big-name Israeli investors and moguls descending on Dubai are ebullient, but thin on details.

“One of the things that’s most touching and exciting for any individual in Israel ... is the fact that this could be an opening to cooperation, an opening of goodwill,” Erel Margalit, founder of Jerusalem Venture Partners, a venture capital fund from the country's thriving tech scene, told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

Trailed by an entourage of 14 Israeli startup executives, a slew of Israeli photographers, foreign journalists and public relations people, Margalit darted around the skyscraper-studded Dubai International Financial Center for meetings with Emirati officials, investors and entrepreneurs.

After years of conducting such deals only in the shadows, Israelis are basking in the photo ops, which presage a broader political shift in the region.

But the buzz also lays bare the differences between the two countries. In the UAE, well-salaried locals who rarely mix with the country’s millions of expatriates tend to shrink from press attention. The state owns or tightly controls the local media. On Tuesday, an Emirati official accompanying the UAE’s minister of food security for talks with Margalit was visibly upset by the crush of photographers swarming around their elbow-bump in the glass-walled conference room.

Although Emiratis have long fostered behind-the-scenes ties with...