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

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates – A record 34 Israeli companies exhibited at IDEX this week, the Middle East’s largest defense expo hosted 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 bitter 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 felt very welcome and we felt at home here,” Boaz Levy, CEO of Israel Aerospace Industries, Israel’s major state-owned aerospace and aviation manufacturer, 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 show in the world.”

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

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

The scene, which played out over the five days of the conference, was a stark contrast from the last major aerospace exhibition in the UAE that featured 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, only three Israeli defense firms were present – IAI, Elbit Systems, and Rafael Advanced Defense Systems – and the country’s pavilion stood largely empty, with representatives unwilling to speak to CNBC or other members of the press. 

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

Israel’s attacks on Gaza since Oct. 7 have 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 more than 230 were taken hostage, of which 66 remain in captivity. Of those 66, Israel has declared 30 to be dead. Hostage and prisoner exchanges between the warring parties are ongoing.

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

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

Shmueli said that her company’s systems — giant balloons that provide command and control stations as well as surveillance and reconnaissance — 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 many people just come by here and say, ‘Oh, it’s so good to see Israeli companies here’,” Shmueli recounted. “We think it’s very good for relations.”

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

For IAI, which builds Israel’s multi-layered missile defense infrastructure including the Iron Dome and Arrow systems, nearly 80% of its production is exported to other countries. Despite having increased domestic production requirements because of the war, the company “didn’t impose any force majeure for any of our customers, and took a decision to work on the same strength for them as well” to fulfil all its deliveries, IAI’s CEO Levy said.

Dror Bar, IAI’s vice president who also heads its subsidiary Elta, which focuses on radar and electronic warfare systems, said that Israel’s wars in both Gaza and Lebanon drove the company to advance its drone and counter-drone technology to meet modern battlefield requirements. 

“The combat-proven slogan is, I think, coming into reality in the most dramatic way,” Bar said. 

If anything, Israel’s warfare since Oct. 7, 2023 has now made its weapons offerings more popular among potential customers at events like IDEX, not less, representatives there said. 

“The reception was wonderful,” Bar said of the arms fair. “We really felt natural and welcomed here, and we are part of this area in the world. So naturally, we feel very good in this environment … and we are very thankful to the UAE government.”