RAMALLAH, January 16 (JMCC) - Palestinians criticized the United Arab Emirates for attempting to buy several drones from Israel in a deal that has been stalled by Israel's defense ministry,
reports Al Akhbar.
“The UAE establishment was caught several times normalizing relations with Israel, in sports, in diamonds, in retail, and even in academia, but this is by far the worst instance of this shameful normalization,” said Omar Barghouti, Palestinian human rights activist and co-founder of the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.
Israel’s ministry of defense has allegedly stalled a drone deal between an Israeli aeronautics company and the UAE, the Palestinian Maan News Agency reported, citing a report by the Paris-based journal Intelligence Online last Thursday.
The UAE was set to buy several drones from Aeronautics, an Israeli company specializing in unmanned aerial vehicles, but the Israeli defense ministry refused to give the deal its stamp of approval.
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Aeronautics is Israel's fifth-largest defense company and manufactures at least six types of drones, several of which have been used against Palestinians in Israeli attacks in Gaza. A Human Rights Watch report from 2009 detailed how Israeli drones killed at least 29 civilians throughout the year.