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It has been announced that two more inter-country deals between agencies in Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have been signed within the science, technology and security industries.
On Thursday, the Israeli and Emirati space agencies published a statement calling for research groups in Israel and the UAE to submit research proposals based on the environmental data collected from the VENµS satellite – the Israeli and French satellite used to observe the Earth’s environmental changes over time. The joint Israeli-Emirati committee will select a single project to fund with $200,000 for a two-year period.
The project “shows how technology connects nations” according to Orit Farkash-Hacohen, Israel’s Science, Technology and Space Minister, and will help to resolve “shared issues between the UAE and Israel, including those in agri-tech, climate change and others”. Sarah bint Yousif Al Amiri, Minister of State for Advanced Technology and Head of the UAE Space Agency explained that “global collaboration is key to leveraging space to protect our planet”.
On Monday, it was announced that Mashreq, an Emirati bank in the UAE, has signed a deal with Israeli cyber security company, ThetaRay, to use its transaction monitoring tool to detect financial crimes. Mashreq, who are ThetaRay’s first Emirati client, said that the technology allowed banks to “effectively thwart financial crime risks in the increasingly complex space of cross-border payments”.
These two deals are just the latest between the UAE and Israel, a relationship that has been growing ever since the two countries signed the Abraham Accords in 2020.
