By Kenneth Bandler
NEW YORK — AJC (American Jewish Committee) has welcomed the announcement that Israel will establish a diplomatic office in Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates.
An Israeli diplomat will be accredited to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), a new UN agency based in Abu Dhabi. Israel is one of IRENA’s 140 members. Israeli officials, including Cabinet ministers, have openly participated in IRENA meetings in the UAE since the organization’s founding in 2009.
“Arab nations in the Gulf and Israel share many concerns and can surely benefit from closer contact,” said AJC Associate Executive Director Jason Isaacson, who has led AJC delegations to the Gulf for more than 20 years. “An Israeli mission in Abu Dhabi is a significant step in furthering Arab-Israeli cooperation, which has so much potential for the region in a range of fields. We hope that other Gulf Cooperation Council member states will follow this welcome example.”
Israel had trade offices in Qatar and Oman in the 1990s, but those offices are not operating today.
AJC, the global Jewish advocacy organization, has regularly visited a number of countries in the Arab world since 1991, in an effort to help advance U.S. and Israeli ties in the region, as well as foster Arab-Jewish and Muslim-Jewish dialogue.
Earlier this week AJC congratulated Mauricio Macri on his election as president of Argentina.
Argentinians “have seen in you unique leadership qualities that are necessary today to meet the growing demands for democracy and respect for human rights in an increasingly globalized and interdependent world,” AJC Executive Director David Harris and Dina Siegel Vann, director of AJC’s Belfer Institute for Latino and Latin American Affairs (BILLA), wrote in a letter to Macri after his electoral victory.
Through BILLA, created in 2005, AJC maintains extensive relations with governments and Jewish communities throughout Latin America, and has an association agreement with AMIA, the vital organization in Latin America’s largest Jewish community. Macri’s two predecessors, Presidents Nestor and Cristina Fernandez Kirchner, each addressed the annual AJC Global Forum in Washington, D.C.
Harris and Siegel Vann urged Macri to continue supporting “all measures to promote truth and justice in the AMIA bombing case, including the revocation of the failed Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Iran.” Iran has been directly implicated in the terrorist attack that destroyed the AMIA Jewish community center, killing 85 and injuring hundreds, in July 1994. Macri has vowed to cancel the MOU, which AJC vigorously opposed from the moment of its promulgation in 2013.
“We hope that during your tenure, bilateral relations among Argentina, the United States and Israel will be strengthened based on shared agendas, which include the fight against terrorism,” wrote Harris and Siegel Vann.
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Bandler is the AJC’s Director of Media Relations