Relationship dossier
Palestine
United Arab Emirates
Relationship assessment
Longstanding Palestinian aid ties coexist with sharp disagreement over UAE normalization with Israel.
Palestine toward United Arab Emirates
+25Palestinian leaders criticized the UAE’s 2020 normalization agreement with Israel, arguing that it weakened leverage for Palestinian statehood. This disagreement has strained Palestine’s government relationship with the UAE.
United Arab Emirates toward Palestine
-20The UAE has provided financial assistance to Palestinians and has supported Palestinian statehood. In 2020, it normalized relations with Israel, a move Palestinian leaders strongly opposed and regarded as a departure from the Arab position linking normalization to progress on Palestinian rights.
Overall relationship
+5The relationship combines UAE financial and humanitarian support for Palestinians with a significant political rupture over the UAE’s 2020 normalization agreement with Israel. The UAE’s continued support for Palestinian statehood tempers, but does not remove, that disagreement.
How to read these scores
Scores are rough judgments, not objective measurements or current verification. Directional scores describe government policy and conduct, not public opinion. The overall score is an independent estimate, never an average.
- −100
- Extreme sustained hostility
- −50
- Substantially adversarial
- 0
- Mixed or neutral, supported by knowledge
- +50
- Substantially cooperative
- +100
- Exceptionally close sustained partnership
“Not assessed” means there is no recorded score. Pair existence makes no claim about diplomatic recognition or established relations.
Relationship context
Overview
Palestine and the United Arab Emirates have longstanding diplomatic and aid ties, and the UAE has provided financial assistance to Palestinians. Relations have also been strained by the UAE’s 2020 normalization of relations with Israel, which Palestinian leaders criticized as a breach of the Arab consensus linking normalization to progress on Palestinian statehood. The UAE continues to support Palestinian statehood and humanitarian assistance, while the normalization agreement remains a major source of disagreement.
Areas of tension
- Palestinian opposition to the UAE’s 2020 normalization agreement with Israel
- Disagreement over whether normalization should be linked to progress on Palestinian statehood
Key developments
The UAE and Israel announced an agreement to normalize relations, drawing strong criticism from Palestinian leaders.
The UAE and Israel signed the Abraham Accords, formalizing normalization.
Major uncertainties
- The scale and continuity of UAE financial and humanitarian assistance to Palestinians are unclear.
- The practical effects of UAE-Israel normalization on bilateral Palestinian-UAE cooperation are uncertain.