Not a day after the UAE-backed Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary had stormed El-Fasher, leaving thousands of civilians butchered in the streets, US Under Secretary of State Jacob Helberg touched down in Abu Dhabi.

“The UAE is a critical strategic partner in advancing America’s economic security and technological leadership,” he wrote on social media. “As a founding signatory of the Abraham Accords, the UAE continues to demonstrate regional leadership as a force for peaceful prosperity.”

The Abraham Accords – a US-brokered “peace paradigm” signed in 2020 between Israel and several Arab states, the UAE foremost among them – served less as a breakthrough in Arab-Israeli rapprochement than as the formalisation of a burgeoning strategic partnership between Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi.

The accords have remained conspicuously resilient in the post-7 October climate. For its part, the UAE has issued occasional rebukes of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, yet few real strains have emerged in the relationship.

“The view in Dubai is that the war has gone on too long,” an Emirati academic disclosed to The New Arab. “But the prevailing sentiment here is that the strategic pros [of the Abraham Accords] still outweigh the cons.”

At Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion Airport, as most international airlines suspended services, Emirati carriers continued to fly, effectively serving as a lifeline for Israeli travel throughout the war. In parallel, ties in finance, agriculture, and energy have deepened since 2020, with the UAE now Israel’s largest trading partner in the Middle East.

Trade in goods between the two countries has surged since October 2023, totalling around $3.2 billion in 2024, according to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, while the two nations’ central banks maintain a formal cooperation agreement.

Yet the most dynamic arenas of Emirati-Israeli cooperation lie in weapons sales, intelligence and surveillance collaboration – mutually underwriting the machinery of Palestinian dispossession in Gaza and the Emirati-engineered partition, or “Libya-fication,” of Sudan.

“The UAE’s logistical bases and financial channels give the RSF steady access to money and materiel, while Israel’s technology and intelligence expertise strengthen the Emirati hand,” Sudanese investigative journalist Eiad Husham told The New Arab.

In 2022, Israel’s largest arms manufacturer, Elbit Systems, opened an Emirati subsidiary and secured a $53 million contract to supply avionics to the Emirati air force. The Gulf monarchy has since deployed Israel’s Barak missile system and, the following year, Israeli and Emirati firms jointly unveiled an unmanned naval vessel in Abu Dhabi – co-developed by Israel Aerospace Industries and funded by the UAE’s state-owned defence conglomerate.

Such levels of military co-production, Tariq Dana of the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies noted, are typically “reserved for NATO members or longstanding US allies such as the European Union”.

Together, the UAE and Israel operate a joint intelligence-sharing platform known as Crystal Ball, through which they “design, deploy and enable regional intelligence enhancement”. Meanwhile, Israeli-Emirati ventures such as Black Wall Global have acted as intermediaries, facilitating the transfer of sensitive technologies to states without formal ties to Israel.

Even more pernicious is the militarised cooperation on the ground. In Gaza, the UAE’s entanglement in Israel’s plan to raze eastern Rafah and construct a “humanitarian city” to confine 600,000 Palestinians has been described as “a concentration camp by any honest measure”.

The two states have become increasingly aligned in Africa, where the UAE, with Israeli assistance, has established a network of military and intelligence bases across the Horn and Yemen.

Israeli military cadres have been stationed on key islands, including Yemen’s Socotra, while Israeli radar systems and other security infrastructure enable the UAE to monitor and intercept attacks by the Houthis, which have targeted Israel-linked vessels in the Red Sea since November 2023.

Since the Houthis seized control of Yemen’s western coast in 2015, relations with Sudan have become a supreme strategic interest for Israel. Through US pressure and Emirati mediation, Sudan signed the Abraham Accords in January 2021, though it has yet to exchange ambassadors with Israel.

Situated on the Red Sea and near the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, Sudan provides access to shipping routes leading to Israel’s port of Eilat in the Gulf of Aqaba and enables the monitoring of routes used to smuggle Iranian weapons to Gaza and Yemen.

“For Israel,” Osman Mekki, lawyer and founder of Sudan Doctors for Human Rights, told The New Arab, “Sudan represents not just a secondary battleground but a strategic buffer.”

Through the UAE and its surrogate, the RSF, Tel Aviv has found in the rhetoric of international maritime security a convenient pretext for expansion, with Sudan’s war serving both as justification and cover for its growing Red Sea footprint.

Indeed, Israeli sources reported in August 2025 that Israel was exploiting Sudan’s war to legitimise its military buildup in the Red Sea under the guise of “protecting global shipping lanes from Houthi threats”.

Several sources also reported that the RSF acquired advanced surveillance equipment flown into Sudan on aircraft linked to former Israeli military officer Tal Dilian. In October 2023, Israeli-made artillery was also observed in the RSF’s possession.

In comments to The New Arab, Eiad Husham confirmed that Emirati lobbying has extended to pro-Israel groups in Washington, working to amplify narratives favourable to the RSF in both the US and Israel while simultaneously deflecting scrutiny from Abu Dhabi’s own role in fuelling the conflict.

“After the fall of El-Fasher and the ensuing international backlash against the UAE,” Osman Mekki said, “propaganda and disinformation campaigns intensified, involving officials and media figures linked to Emirati outlets.”

In April, RSF official Youssef Ezzat drew a parallel between his faction’s war against Sudan’s army and Israel’s fight against Palestinian groups.

“What we are exposed to,” he told Israel’s Kan broadcaster, “Israel has suffered thousands of times from terrorist groups such as Hamas and other factions that Israeli citizens know well.”

The Israeli state itself has joined the Emiratis in criticising the Sudanese military. Mere days after the RSF’s massacre in El-Fasher, a post on Israel’s official Arabic-language X account likened the army to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.

As Israel castigates the Sudanese army, the RSF has begun to mirror Israel’s own discursive gymnastics. Luigi Daniele, senior lecturer in international humanitarian law at Nottingham Law School, observed that “the RSF is adopting the same language Israel uses to legitimise collective punishment.” Declaring “entire neighbourhoods or camps as ‘military zones’ is a clear attempt to strip civilians of protection… a tactic pioneered in Gaza,” he added.

“There is a strong argument to be made that Israel’s impunity has contributed to a broader erosion of accountability norms, which groups like the RSF have learned to exploit,” Osman Mekki told The New Arab.

“When powerful states like Israel face no meaningful legal or political consequences for clear violations of international humanitarian law,” he added.

“It normalises the principle of selective enforcement. It teaches armed groups and their backers… that accountability is negotiable, and that international legal mechanisms can be manipulated through narrative framing and geopolitical protection.”