A senior White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said on Tuesday that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan would lead the two delegations to the event.
“I am proud to embark next week to Washington, at the invitation of President Trump, to take part in the this historic ceremony at the White House for the foundation of the peace treaty between Israel and the United (Arab) Emirates,” Netanyahu wrote in a post published on Twitter.
Trump and other officials from his administration have said they expect Saudi Arabia and several other Arab countries to follow suit in recognizing Israel.
Last week, Trump’s son-in-law and White House adviser, Jared Kushner, and other senior US officials accompanied an Israeli delegation on the first-ever direct commercial passenger flight to the UAE. The Israeli flag carrier El Al’s plane arrived in Abu Dhabi on August 31 from Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion Airport in the occupied territories.
After accompanying the Israeli delegation to the UAE, Kushner set off on a tour of other Persian Gulf littoral states the following day, looking for more Arab support for normalization talks with Israel.
The White House announced the UAE-Israel deal on August 13.
While Emirati officials have described the normalization deal with the Tel Aviv regime as a successful means to stave off annexation and save the so-called two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Israeli leaders have lined up to reject the claim as a bluff.
The Palestinians say the peace treaty runs counter to a long-standing Arab consensus that any normalization of ties with the Tel Aviv regime has to come in the context of the settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state.
They believe the UAE, as an important Arab player in the region, has stabbed fellow Palestinians in the back, and that the agreement does not serve the cause of the Palestinians against Israeli occupation.