Why are not Emiratis flocking to Israel?
There are differences in the demographics and citizenship rules of both countries.
According to data by the UAE Embassy in Israel, the number of Israeli tourists visiting the UAE surpassed the one million since the Abraham Accords signing three years ago. However, only 1,600 Emirati citizens have visited Israel in the first two years since the signing of the Accords. The staggering difference in the number of visitors can be attributed to many factors.
There are differences in the demographics and citizenship rules of both countries. One the one hand, although the UAE has a bigger population than Israel, there are much less Emirati than there are Israeli citizens. Of the 10 million people living in the UAE, only 11% (1,100,000) are Emiratis. The rest of the population are expats of which over 60% are Asian (6,000,000) mostly from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. The UAE has strict citizenship requirement. Hence, expats hardly ever get the Emirati citizenship to be considered Emirati citizens. This means that if a resident of the UAE visits Israel, there is only 1/10 chance they are Emiratis. The other 9/10 residents of the UAE will fly to Israel using other nationalities and passports. Hence, the number of total visitors from the UAE to Israel might actually be higher if the country of residence rather than country of nationality was taken into account when calculating the number of visitors. Â
On the other hand, Israel has 9,700,000 people of which three quarters are Jews (7,100,000), whilst Arabs constitute 20% (2,000,000) of the population. Both Jews and Arabs have Israeli citizenship and passport. This means that most travellers from Israel to the UAE count as Israeli which increases the counted number of citizens substantially over the Emirati figures. However, despite the high number of Israeli visitors currently, the limited population means over time, the total number of visitors is likely to stabilise and experience some decline.
Politically, people to people interaction following recent normalisation between Arab countries and Israel remains low. Jordan and Egypt have normalised ties with Israel decades before gulf countries, but this did not yield significant positive results on the depth of peoples’ interaction. Prospective Arab Muslims visiting Al-Aqsa Mosque will encounter Israeli checkpoints and soldiers and must deal with the psychical reality of occupation. This makes any visit challenging even if politicians think otherwise, which deters many visitors. Furthermore, many fear that Palestinians will react negatively to their visit and deem it unacceptable. Hence, potential stigma deters some potential visitors. In spite of the current limited numbers, a resolution for the Palestinian issue may result in a substantial increase in the total number of visitors from Arab countries including the UAE.
Finally, although the UAE and Israel succeeded in achieving a breakthrough in tourism, it will be challenging to sustain high figures on the long term. This is due to the limited number of people in both countries, politics, and lack of resolution for the Palestinian issue.