Senior US and Israeli officials landed in the United Arab Emirates on Monday on a historic trip to finalize a pact marking open relations between Israel and the Gulf state, and told Palestinians it was now time for them to negotiate peace.
White House senior adviser Jared Kushner added on arrival that Washington would maintain Israel's military edge while advancing its ties to the UAE, the Arab world's second-largest economy, and a regional power.
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Announced on Aug. 13, the normalization deal is the first such accord between an Arab country and Israel in more than 20 years and was forged largely through shared fears of Iran.
Palestinians were dismayed by the UAE's move, attacking the departure from the traditional stance of linking both tracks.
Kushner said Palestinians should not be "stuck in the past".
"They have to come to the table. Peace will be ready for them, an opportunity will be ready for them as soon as they are ready to embrace it," said Kushner, part of a US delegation that accompanied Israeli officials on the first official Israeli flight from Tel Aviv to the UAE.
Kushner and national security adviser Robert O'Brien head the US delegation. The Israeli team is led by O'Brien's counterpart, Meir Ben-Shabbat.
Israel and the United Arab Emirates will discuss economic, scientific, trade, and cultural cooperation on the visit. Direct flights between the two countries will also be on the agenda, an Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman told al Arabiya television after landing in Abu Dhabi.
Even before landing, the delegates made aviation history when the Israeli commercial airliner flew over Saudi territory on the direct flight from Tel Aviv to the UAE capital.
"That's what peace for peace looks like," Netanyahu tweeted, describing a deal for formal ties with an Arab state that does not entail handover of land that Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.
Like all El Al 737s, the aircraft was equipped with an anti-missile system, an Israeli spokesman said, and carried security agents of the US Secret Service and the Israeli Shin Bet to guard the delegations.
Onboard the packed airliner, passengers were welcomed in Arabic as well as English and Hebrew, a gesture marking the historic flight.
"Wishing us all salaam, peace and shalom, have a safe flight," the pilot, Captain Tal Becker, said on the intercom, in Arabic, English, and Hebrew, using all three languages to also announce the flight number and destination.
Senior Palestinian official Saeb Erekat tweeted: "Peace is not an empty word used to normalize crimes and oppression. Peace is the outcome of justice. Peace is not made by denying Palestine's right to exist and imposing an apartheid regime. Apartheid is what Netanyahu means by "peace for peace."
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