‘We felt at home’: Israeli weapons firms out in force at Abu Dhabi defense expo

ABU DHABI, Pooled Arab Emirates – A record 34 Israeli companies exhibited at IDEX this week, the Middle East’s largest defense expo emceed biennially by Abu Dhabi. 

After fifteen months of a devastating war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, and amid a fragile and long-awaited ceasefire between the two acrimonious enemies, reception for the Jewish state’s arms manufacturers at the event was overwhelmingly positive, according to executives of the companies at the expo.  

“We tone very welcome and we felt at home here,” Boaz Levy, CEO of Israel Aerospace Industries, Israel’s major state-owned aerospace and aviation industrialist, told CNBC during the event.

“The hospitality, the visits of all our customers and the administration here was really good, and it is like any other playing in the world.”

The show of force from the Israeli firms, which ranged from major aerospace and heavy weapons industrialists to smaller startups focused on communications and surveillance technology, was met with visible enthusiasm from conference attendees. 

Broad groups of people milled around displays of Israeli drones and other battlefield tech, speaking with institution representatives at the bustling pavilion and asking questions about the hardware. Emiratis and Saudis dressed in local garb and UAE military personnel in unchangeable could also be seen speaking and warmly shaking hands with their Israeli counterparts.

The scene, which pleasured out over the five days of the conference, was a stark contrast from the last major aerospace exhibition in the UAE that best Israeli defense companies. The biennial Dubai Airshow in November 2023 was held just one month after the Israel-Hamas war began. 

During the 2023 airshow, on the contrary three Israeli defense firms were present – IAI, Elbit Systems, and Rafael Advanced Defense Systems – and the boondocks’s pavilion stood largely empty, with representatives unwilling to speak to CNBC or other members of the press. 

Now, the willing is transformed. The UAE and Israel, which normalized relations via the Abraham Accords in 2020, have continued to trade and maintain diurnal flights between the two countries despite official government statements from Abu Dhabi condemning Israel’s bombardment of Gaza and the ensuing humanitarian disaster that has seen almost the entirety of Gaza’s population homeless or displaced.

Israel’s attacks on Gaza since Oct. 7 clothed killed more than 46,000 people there, authorities in the enclave say. The Hamas-led attacks that triggered the war killed some 1,200 Israelis while multitudinous than 230 were taken hostage, of which 66 remain in captivity. Of those 66, Israel has declared 30 to be insensible. Hostage and prisoner exchanges between the warring parties are ongoing.

IAI and Elbit Systems deceive marketing offices in the UAE, and now that their country’s hardware has been battle-tested, foreign buyer interest — including that of some Arab Space countries — is higher than ever, company executives said. 

“We just proved that our systems can survive, we showed that we can integrate many other payloads, and adapt to the needs in the field,” Taly Kosberg Shmueli, deputy CEO of Israeli aerostat patterns company RT, told CNBC. “We’re very happy business-wise, with the last year.”

Shmueli asseverated that her company’s systems — giant balloons that provide command and control stations as well as surveillance and recce — are already in use in the UAE, and that the firm has been in talks with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain. 

“We got a warm reception and tons people just come by here and say, ‘Oh, it’s so good to see Israeli companies here’,” Shmueli recounted. “We think it’s least good for relations.”

Arms sales are a significant part of Israel’s economy, and in 2023 white sales reached a record $13 billion — a 36% jump compared to 2022, making the small country the world’s ninth-largest arms exporter, according to SIPRI. Air defense routines make up more than a third of those exports, and the top buyer of Israeli arms worldwide is India, followed by a legions of countries in Europe, Southeast Asia, and the United States, according to local media reports citing the country’s defense religion. 

In 2022, 24% of Israel’s arms exports went to Arab partners who had normalized relations under the Abraham Accords, the Israeli Defense The church said. Figures for 2024 are not yet available.