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When the Abraham Accords were signed in September 2020, they were widely seen as a diplomatic breakthrough . Few anticipated how quickly they would translate into economic reality. Since then, Israel–UAE trade alone has reached more than $8.4 billion, , even as the region has endured war and instability. What began as declarations of goodwill has evolved into capital flows, joint ventures, new supply routes, and a growing web of partnerships, underscoring the Middle East’s central role in securing the economic interests of global powers such as the United States, India, and Europe.

At the time the Abraham Accords were signed, Fleur Hassan-Nahoum was serving as Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem and had already begun laying the groundwork for what would become the UAE–Israel Business Council. Business ties and informal engagement, she notes, were already taking shape quietly across the region. The idea behind the council was born not out of certainty but anticipation, a sense that political normalization, if it came, would allow those connections to move into the open and scale.

Coming from a Moroccan heritage and raised in Gibraltar, Hassan-Nahoum says her background naturally led her to work at the intersection of diplomacy, business, and people-to-people engagement, helping translate normalization agreements into practical cooperation across the region.

Turning Normalization Into Infrastructure

For Hassan-Nahoum, the significance of the Abraham Accords lay less in their symbolism than in what they made possible. Years of quiet engagement had already created relationships. Normalization, she says, allowed those relationships to scale quickly and openly.

In July 2020, she and a business partner launched the UAE–Israel Business Council, anticipating that formal ties would require an economic framework ready to operate. A month later, normalization with the UAE was announced. Within weeks, Emirati and Israeli business leaders were meeting, first virtually and then in person, moving rapidly from dialogue to execution.

Unlike earlier normalization agreements in the region, which she characterizes as strategic but distant, Hassan-Nahoum emphasizes that the Abraham Accords were designed to be people-led and business-driven from the outset. Trust, she notes, was built slowly and deliberately through repeated encounters, cultural exchange, and patience. “You don’t build trust in a day,” she says. “You build it over time, meal by meal, visit by visit.”  

And indeed, that trust was built and ties were strengthened. Since 2023, the region has faced sustained conflict and geopolitical strain. Yet the economic ties have held. In 2024, in the midst of war, trade between Israel and the UAE reached more than $3 billion, an increase over the previous year. Sovereign wealth funds from the Gulf have invested more than a billion dollars in Israel’s energy infrastructure, signaling long-term commitment rather than symbolic engagement.

Hassan-Nahoum argues that this resilience is not accidental. It reflects shared interests in sectors where regional challenges overlap, including water technology, agriculture, health, cybersecurity, energy, and defense. “These are regional problems,” she says. “And Israel’s innovation is built around solving exactly those problems.”
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From Accords to Architecture

Middle East diplomacy is evolving into global corridors shaping economic alliances, with Fleur Hassan-Nahoum at the center of the transformation.