Israel eyes Dubai expo as 'portal' to Arab world

TEL AVIV－With the world's largest trade fair to be held for the first time in an Arab country next year, Israel is stepping up preparations, hoping to boost nascent ties with regional neighbors.

Beginning in October 2020, the Dubai Expo 2020 trade fair will gather nearly 200 countries vying for the attention of a projected 25 million visitors over six months.

Like most Arab countries, the United Arab Emirates has no diplomatic relations with Israel.

But the Jewish state has been quietly moving closer to Gulf Arab countries on the basis of shared security interests and a common enemy: Iran.

An Israeli pavilion at an Arab-hosted expo will offer a unique opportunity to speed up the "normalization" of relations and reach out to Arab peoples, officials say.

"To us, the added value is in the Arab and Muslim visitor," said Elazar Cohen, the Israeli Foreign Ministry's representative for the expo.

So far public overtures between Israel and Arab nations have been cautious but notable, with Israeli athletes and officials increasingly allowed into Gulf countries.

The expo is "a unique meeting between cultures and languages and people who don't routinely meet", said David Knafo, the Tel Aviv-based architect behind the design of Israel's pavilion.

Designed to reflect Israel's sense of belonging to the region as well as the openness the Jewish state seeks to broadcast to its Arab neighbors, "the pavilion is therefore an open space－a living room to host the expo visitors".

Concept videos of the pavilion reveal stairs leading up a representation of a sand dune.

Described as a "pavilion with no walls and no borders", the stairs are arched by large LED screens showing images of different aspects of Israeli society.

The aim, Knafo said, is to symbolize Israel's transformation of its deserts through culture and technology, hinting at the possibility that other desert lands could do the same.

An auditorium below the pavilion will offer visitors an interactive multimedia experience, said the Israeli Foreign Ministry's director general Yuval Rotem.

It aims to showcase "the Israeli spirit and culture" in innovations and developments from fields such as water, medicine and information technology, he said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has described the Israeli expo pavilion as part of "the continued progress of normalization with the Arab states".

Past Israeli leaders saw peace with the Palestinians as the gateway to ties with the broader Arab and Muslim world.

But with the peace process frozen for years now, Netanyahu argues instead that building relations with Arab countries will push the Palestinians toward a peace deal with Israel.

The Israeli presence in Dubai "will create a buzz", said Cohen, noting that the lack of a peace agreement, or even process, with the Palestinians is still liable to draw the attention of at least some Arab visitors at the expo.

Quasi-diplomatic

The pavilion's display won't touch on politics, he added, instead "focusing on what Israel has to offer".

Dore Gold, former director-general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, said the "quasi-diplomatic presence" of the pavilion is one of several developments with "a cumulative effect".

He cited sporting competitions and the 2015 opening in Abu Dhabi of an Israeli mission to the International Renewable Energy Agency, which is based there.

"It's not normalization, but it's an enhanced presence," he said.

While the Gulf Arab states have not lost interest in the Palestinian issue, "these countries are looking after themselves", Dore said, including enhancing security cooperation with Israel against Iran.

Gold said the expo was part of attempts to slowly publicize aspects of relations in the region not pertaining to security. "In any case, if you did public opinion surveys, you'd find that throughout most of the Gulf there's a kind of understanding that Israel's part of the region," he said.