SOCIAL POST: The UAE is Supporting a Coup Against Netanyahu
Israeli expansionism is not compatible with the Emirati regional vision.
Abu Dhabi’s diplomatic recognition of Yair Lapid is a political intervention in Israel’s domestic sphere reflecting a rift between the United Arab Emirates and Benjamin Netanyahu’s regional visions. There are deep structural tensions between the Emirati model of regional order and the ethno-religious vision advanced by Netanyahu’s coalition. What appears on the surface as a scheduling choice in foreign diplomacy is in fact a strategic act of regime preference.
The UAE is aligning itself with a current inside Israel that supports economic integration and geopolitical stability rather than religious expansionism and permanent occupation. This rupture is embedded in the contradictions of the Abraham Accords. The original design under US President Trump aimed to produce a post-Arab nationalist regional bloc centred on capital mobility, authoritarian stability, and containment of political Islam. The convergence of Israel, the UAE, and US assumed shared economic interests and strategic rationality.
But Netanyahu’s government has subordinated this vision to the imperatives of religious Zionism and territorial maximalism. Israel is no longer cooperating. It is just a nationalist project. Netanyahu’s policies destabilise Jordan, undermine the two-state illusion, and render long-term Gulf investment in the Levant politically toxic. The UAE sees this and can’t afford it. Israel exports volatility incompatible with the Emirati vision.
By elevating Lapid, the UAE signals a preference for an Israel that is economically aggressive but politically restrained: a partner capable of operating within a shared commercial logic, not one that instrumentalises normalisation to pursue ethno-religious consolidation. This is the quiet regionalisation of Israel’s internal conflict. The Gulf is no longer a passive observer but an active curator of Israeli legitimacy. The coup is not military or institutional. It is diplomatic, economic, and strategic. And it is already underway.