The military-industrial backbone of Israeli normalization

By Tariq Dana
Published
A drone used for law enforcement at the International Exhibtion For National Security and Resilience in the Emirati capital Abu Dhabi, 2022.

First published at MERIP.

In February 2025, as international condemnation of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza reached new heights, Abu Dhabi hosted the International Defence Exhibition and Conference.

Over five days a record 34 Israeli arms companies, including giants like Israel Aerospace Industries and Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, showcased their latest wares alongside their Emirati partners. The event, billed as a milestone in regional cooperation, featured joint displays of advanced unmanned systems and cyber tools. Since the start of Israel’s genocide, business has been booming. Bilateral trade between Israel and the UAE soared to $3.24 billion in 2024, marking an 11 percent increase from the year prior.

The expo was made possible by the UAE’s entry into the Abraham Accords: the deal to normalize relations between Israel and several Arab countries brokered during President Donald Trump’s first term. The administration framed the Accords as historic breakthroughs, “establishing a legacy of peace and prosperity” — as glossy brochures circulated by the Abraham Accords Peace Institute proclaim. The Washington DC‑based nonprofit, founded in 2021, promotes and tracks normalization and publishes annual “scorecards” of trade, tourism and security cooperation that paint the “New Middle East” in optimistic hues: open trade routes, flights between Tel Aviv and Dubai and gleaming technology hubs promising regional innovation.

Behind this veneer lies a far grimmer reality. The most dynamic areas of Arab-Israeli cooperation are not cultural exchange or conflict resolution, but weapons sales, intelligence and surveillance collaboration and digital repression. Since signing the accords, the UAE, Morocco and Bahrain have poured capital into Israel’s military-industrial complex, effectively financing the infrastructure of Palestinian dispossession. Israel, meanwhile, exports its occupation-tested technologies to help these states entrench domestic autocracy. This mutual exchange of repressive capabilities is central to the normalization project.

At its core, the material politics of normalization reveals an alliance of convenience. Arab regimes secure Israeli arms and surveillance tools to control their populations, Israel expands its customer base and strategic reach and the United States engineers a framework that shores up its imperial grip on the region. In the process, the counterrevolutionary forces that have been resurgent since the crushing of the 2011 Arab uprisings grow more entrenched. It marks the consolidation of an anti-democratic axis, where elites trade power and impose it from above, often at the expense of Palestinian and regional self-determination.

From handshakes to hardware

Normalization cracked open Arab arms markets that were historically sealed off to Israel, transforming the region into a lucrative export frontier for Tel Aviv’s military-industrial complex.1 Since the signing of the Abraham Accords in 2020, Israel’s military sector has surged into overdrive. Between 2020 and 2022, Israeli defense exports rose more than 55 percent, with Gulf states accounting for a growing slice. In 2021 alone, Israel exported $11.3 billion in arms — a 30 percent jump from the previous year — with Arab countries making up 7 percent of that figure.2 By 2024, Israeli arms exports hit a historic high of $14.79 billion, up 13 percent from the previous year. The Arab share had grown to 12 percent, signaling that normalization has matured into a central pillar of Israel’s arms economy.3 These sales include drone systems, cyber tools, missile defense platforms and AI-powered technologies.

The UAE, in particular, has rapidly scaled up its military partnership with Israel.4 By 2022, Israel’s largest military manufacturer, Elbit Systems, had opened a UAE-based subsidiary and landed a $53 million contract to supply advanced avionics to the Emirati air force. Satellite imagery around the same time revealed the quiet deployment of Israel’s Barak missile interceptor system in the Emirates, designed to counter Iranian influence. One year later, Israeli and Emirati companies jointly unveiled an unmanned naval vessel at the annual Naval Defence and Maritime Security Exhibition in Abu Dhabi, developed by Israel Aerospace Industries and funded by the UAE’s state-owned military conglomerate, EDGE group. This level of military co-production is normally reserved for NATO or longstanding US allies such as the EU and Israel.

Morocco, too, has moved fast. After signing a security memorandum with Israel in 2021, Rabat began purchasing Israeli drones and air defense systems and held talks to acquire Merkava tanks. In June 2023, Israel’s infamous Golani Brigade, whose war crimes in Gaza are well documented, joined US-led exercises on Moroccan soil, an unprecedented development that reflects the extent to which normalization is institutionalizing a new regional security architecture.

Driving this militarization are a common set of perceptions about the region and a shared patron, the United States. The Gulf members of the Abraham Accords are aligned in hostility toward Iran and regional resistance movements, while the Moroccan government’s goal is to counter neighboring Algeria’s military spending and to use Israeli counterinsurgency expertise in its war against Saharan nationalists. The United States has been central to knitting these ties together. In 2021, Washington shifted Israel from US European Command (EUCOM) into the US Central Command (CENTCOM) area of operations, enabling direct military coordination with Arab states. General Kenneth McKenzie, then CENTCOM commander, stated that the move would “put an operational perspective” on the accords and “open up corridors and opportunities between Israel and Arab countries in the region.”5

US officials have since prioritized building integrated air and missile defense networks, envisioning shared early warning systems and coordinated intercept capabilities between Israel and the Gulf. These ambitions took partial form during the 12-day military clash between Israel and Iran in June 2025, which served as a trial for real-time regional security coordination.

For Israel, the strategic benefits are immense. It gains formal entry into Arab security spheres without altering its colonial policies toward Palestinians. Normalization not only enhances its regional legitimacy but also erodes diplomatic pressure to end the occupation. For Arab states, the accords unlock public access to Israeli security technology, battle tested on the Palestinians.6 What used to happen behind closed doors now takes place openly, dressed in the language of peace and modernization.

The business of repression

While fighter jets and missile batteries dominate headlines, an equally consequential aspect of normalization is unfolding in cyberspace and the surveillance domain. Long before the Abraham Accords were signed, the UAE, Bahrain and Morocco — alongside others yet to formalize ties — were already entrenched clients of Israel’s private spyware industry. Companies like NSO Group, infamous for their Pegasus software, supplied these regimes with tools to spy on journalists, dissidents and activists. Normalization did not initiate these ties. It institutionalized them.

Within months of signing the accords, Israel, the UAE, Bahrain and Morocco formalized cybersecurity partnerships, embedding digital repression into the region’s new security infrastructure. At a 2023 cyber technology conference in Tel Aviv, a US Department of Homeland Security official from the Biden administration lauded the emerging cyber alliance as “a piece of cybersecurity history” and “a wonderful opportunity to deepen security partnerships.”7 For regimes already entrenched in digital authoritarianism, eliminating barriers to acquiring Israeli spyware was indeed historic.

This cooperation quickly developed into profit driven ventures. Israeli firms specializing in surveillance and cyber warfare technologies aggressively expanded into Gulf markets. In 2021, Israel’s Rafael defence firm established a consortium of Israeli cybersecurity companies to pursue contracts in Dubai. Elbit Systems, which in addition to arms provides cyber and digital products, opened an office in the UAE and, shortly after, secured a multimillion dollar deal. Gulf capital reciprocated: Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund, Mubadala, invested over $100 million in Israeli tech startups, including those whose technologies are tested on occupied Palestinians.

Group 42, the Emirati firm linked to the 2019 ToTok scandal (where the social media app was revealed to function as a mass surveillance tool) proudly became the first to open an office in Israel after the Accords. With its focus on AI and biometric surveillance, Group 42 is positioned to be a key conduit for Israeli repression technology, suggesting not just commercial interests but also likely strategic adoption of Israel’s digital policing model.

In parallel, companies like Black Wall Global, a joint Israeli-Emirati venture, have emerged as intermediaries to facilitate the flow of sensitive technologies to countries without official ties to Israel. Unveiled immediately after the signing of the Abraham Accords, Black Wall Global brokers cyber weapon and spyware deals for clients seeking to avoid political controversy. Staffed by former Israeli intelligence officers and Emirati financiers, the company openly describes its role in laundering Israeli surveillance technology through UAE partnerships. “They can always come to the UAE, partner with a UAE company, and basically be sold as an Emirati company,” explained the firm’s Emirati co-director.8

These developments contribute directly to deepening autocratic rule. The UAE, Bahrain and Morocco are already highly securitized states. Importing Israeli spyware and training enhances their ability to police, monitor and silence domestic opposition. Observers like Marwa Fatafta, writing in these pages in 2023, have warned that a joint foray into cybersecurity will usher in “a new wave of tech-enabled transnational repression.”9 Bahraini and Emirati police have invited Israeli officials to modernize their security forces: Israel’s police commissioner has made high-profile visits to the UAE and even stationed a permanent liaison officer in Abu Dhabi.

AI and high-tech militarization

Israel has earned a global reputation — built through decades of occupation and war — for its expertise in weaponized drones and AI-driven systems. In line with this record, its devastation of Gaza is the first AI-assisted genocide in history. By employing programs such as Gospel and Lavender, Israel has created a “ mass assassination factory” that has killed thousands of civilians and destroyed infrastructure on a massive scale. Arab states are now eager to tap into this technology to bolster their own security and control infrastructures.

One prominent example is the partnership, established in March 2021, between Israel’s Aerospace Industries and the UAE’s EDGE group to develop AI-driven, unmanned naval vessels. These systems represent the frontier of AI militarization, utilizing advanced robotics, real-time data processing and autonomous threat-detection capabilities. The UAE also partnered with Israel to create a joint “Cyber Academy” between Emirati intelligence and Israeli veterans of Unit 8200, Israel’s elite cyber warfare division. The project aimed to train Emirati personnel in offensive and defensive cyber techniques, and has been one of multiple such initiatives announced since 2020.

AI also underpins many of the smart surveillance systems being rolled out in cities from the Gulf to North Africa. The dual-use nature of AI blurs lines between military and civilian applications, and here, too, normalization gives Israeli companies access to new markets. In 2016 Abu Dhabi deployed a mass surveillance system called Falcon Eye. What it did not advertise was that the project was steered by an Israeli security contractor who flew Israeli engineers into the UAE on private jets to install surveillance cameras.10 That was before formal ties. Nowadays such partnerships are public.

In the wake of the Accords, Mubadala, Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund, announced a plan to invest $10 billion in multiple sectors in Israel over the next few years. By January 2022, Mubadala had allocated $100 million to several Israeli venture capital firms, such as Viola Ventures, Pitango, Entrée Capital, Aleph Capital, Mangrove Capital Partners and MizMaa. Most of these firms directly support companies that develop militarized security technologies tested and used by the Israeli military against Palestinians. Dubai’s Oyoon program, launched after the Abraham Accords, is a citywide platform using more than 300,000 cameras with facial recognition, resembling Israel’s AnyVision (later rebranded Oosto), whose large‑scale facial recognition system is known as “Facebook for Palestinians.”11 As these security industries collaborate, the exchange of facial recognition, predictive policing and autonomous border tools will only deepen.

When Israeli and Emirati officials promote their new partnerships, they speak not only of deterring Iran, but of turning their region into a hub for “innovation” in security technology. That innovation, however, is grounded in decades of Israeli colonization. It means more lethal autonomous drones in the skies and more repressive algorithms tracking social media for dissent.

Asymmetry, dependency and control

The military and security dimensions of the Abraham Accords reveal a deeply hierarchical architecture that reinforces existing power asymmetries rather than building equitable partnerships. Israel retains its technological edge and operational freedom, while Arab signatories receive limited defensive capabilities that intensify their dependence on Israeli and US support. For example, the UAE was promised a $23 billion arms package, including 50 F-35 fighter jets and 18 MQ-9 Reaper drones, in what was framed as a reward for recognizing Israel. But the agreement collapsed when Washington imposed operational restrictions to preserve Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge — a core US policy in the Middle East to maintain Israel’s regional superiority and dominance.

Further entrenching this asymmetry, the flow of military technology operates almost entirely in one direction. Israel is the principal supplier of security and military products, while Arab states serve primarily as financiers and customers. The selective nature of Israeli technology sharing ensures that recipient states cannot develop autonomous capabilities that might alter the regional balance of power or diminish Israel’s military advantage. The economic beneficiary of this model is clear. Israel has gained new arms markets and expanded its regional influence in critical sectors within recipient countries. Arab states, in contrast, remain passive customers, unable to build parallel domestic industries or capabilities.

Moreover, these arrangements are built to sustain dependency. Israeli systems require ongoing support such as maintenance, spare parts, software upgrades and operational guidance, creating enduring channels of control. This technological umbilical cord gives Israel leverage that extends well beyond the point of sale and mimics the decades-long strategy the US military industrial complex has employed to yoke its own allies to a system of intensified militarization and imperial collaboration.

The entire security framework of the accords operates under US strategic oversight, particularly through CENTCOM. Israeli and Arab militaries are increasingly integrated into US command structures, aligning their policies with Washington’s regional vision rather than developing independent or nationally driven security architectures. Indeed, the Abraham Accords cannot be separated from the strategic imperatives of the United States in maintaining imperial hegemony.

Normalization fits within Washington’s broader strategy, consistent across administrations, of offshore balancing through the delegation of regional policing to trusted allies while maintaining hegemony through arms sales, intelligence sharing and economic integration. As talk of bringing Saudi Arabia into the fold grows — with security guarantees on offer in exchange for token gestures on Palestine — the United States aims to cement an axis of power uniting Israel with conservative Arab states. This plan is not a deviation from past policy, but its logical extension: replacing the defunct “peace process” with an overt security and investment alliance that entrenches settler-colonialism and insulates Israel from accountability.

Tariq Dana is associate professor of Conflict and Humanitarian Studies at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Qatar.

Israel Gulf states Middle East UAE Saudi Arabia United States Palestine

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