Israel's Prime Minister met Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the UAE's President, a little over a day ago. He flew in on a private plane. He flew home the same day. Nobody announced it.
So how do we know? A senior Israeli official confirmed it to Reuters this morning. Israel's Channel 12 and KAN reported it too. So did the newspapers Haaretz and The Jerusalem Post.
Channel 12 says the plane wasn't even a government jet. It belongs to an Israeli businessman, and Israel's public broadcaster KAN says senior figures use it for trips abroad when they don't want to be seen.
And here's the thing. Neither government has said one word about what happened in that room.
No agenda. No readout. Nothing.
This has happened before. Five months ago, Netanyahu's office announced he'd secretly visited the UAE and met Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed. His office called it a historic breakthrough. A source familiar with that meeting said it happened on 26 March, in an oasis city called Al Ain, and lasted several hours. Mossad's director was in the country at the same time. So were Israeli Iron Dome air defence systems.
And the UAE denied all of it. Its foreign ministry said no such visit ever happened, and said Israel-UAE relations aren't built on what it called "non-transparent or unofficial arrangements".
So what's different this time? Nobody is denying it.
Both governments are just staying quiet.
Now, the timing. This visit came two days after Donald Trump rejected a seven-day ceasefire plan from Iran. That plan would have reopened the Strait of Hormuz. Iran's Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi, offered to end what Tehran calls America's acts of aggression, lift its naval blockade, and free up frozen Iranian money. In exchange, the fighting would pause and nuclear talks would restart.
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Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, is pictured at night from the International Space Station. File photo. NASA Johnson Space Center · Public domain
Donald Trump said no.
And the Wall Street Journal reports that Trump has privately told his aides he expects to start bombing Iran again after November's midterm elections.
So Netanyahu flew into Abu Dhabi with that hanging over the region. A war that just got told it isn't ending soon.
There's a second reason this visit is sensitive. Haaretz reported this month that Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed personally warned Netanyahu, a week and a half before the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack, that a major operation was coming. That warning never reached Israel's intelligence agencies. It never reached the military either.
Netanyahu denies the report. He's threatened to sue the newspaper over it. He's also fighting a tough re-election campaign right now, and opposition leaders are blaming him for the security failures before that attack.
The UAE won't comment on the Haaretz report itself. But it has said Israel and the UAE have kept what it calls "open and direct lines of communication" since the two countries struck their deal in 2020.
A UAE source has told Reuters, separately, that the UAE only discusses security through what it calls relevant entities — not at the level of national leaders.
That's an odd thing to say twice in six months, about two meetings between its own president and Israel's prime minister.
And the UAE has its own reasons for keeping this relationship tight. It came under attack during the Iran war itself. Since then, it's leaned harder into security ties with both the United States and Israel, under the 2020 Abraham Accords — ties that hand it a direct line to Washington, and more weight in the region.
So what don't we know? Whether military coordination came up. Whether the Haaretz warning came up. Whether either side made any promises at all. Neither government is saying.
Here's what we do know. Twice in six months, Netanyahu has slipped into the UAE unannounced, met its president, and flown home the same day. And twice, the UAE's answer has been silence — not a confirmation, and not a denial either.
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