Israeli Hospital Sheba, UAE’s APEX to Develop Health Technologies
Israel‘s Sheba Medical Center and the United Arab Emirates’s APEX National Investment said on Thursday they signed a preliminary agreement to jointly promote healthcare technologies in the UAE and the Gulf region.
The memorandum of understanding is the first cooperation announced between an Israeli hospital with an Emirati company after Israel and the UAE agreed to normalize relations last month.
A final agreement is expected to be signed around Sept. 21 in the UAE, said Yoel Hareven, director of Sheba International at Sheba Medical Center.
Hareven said the MOU will pave the way for cooperation on medical innovation, professional training, medical tourism and COVID-19 treatment.
“We’ve embedded existing Israeli telemedicine (remote treatment) technology which allows us to provide medical care to coronavirus patients while minimizing risk to the medical teams ‐‐ this is of great interest to the Emirates,” he said.
Sheba and APEX will form an innovation hub in the Gulf based on Sheba’s big data platform, a joint statement said.
Since the Aug. 13 announcement to formalize ties, Israeli and UAE companies have started to work towards cooperation in banking and other fields.
Last month, right after the diplomatic deal was announced, APEX signed a deal with Israeli Tera Group to cooperate on COVID-19 R&D including a testing device.
A formal signing ceremony between the UAE and Israel will be hosted by US President Donald Trump on Sept. 15, a White House official said on Tuesday.
This comes as Jared Kushner, advisor to the US President, considered that the Arab League’s failure to condemn the agreement on normalization between the UAE and Israel constitutes an important shift in the region.
Kushner said, according to the Axios news site, that “the Arab League’s failure to condemn the normalization agreement between the UAE and Israel is evidence of an important transformation in the Middle East,” considering that the patience of the countries supporting the Palestinians has run out and that they are seeking normalization with Israel in a way that serves their interests.
He also indicated that Saudi Arabia and Bahrain allow Israeli airlines to use their airspace when heading east towards Asia, and that any Israeli airline that requests a license to use Saudi airspace in order to go east will obtain it.
Kushner confirmed that President Donald Trump’s administration’s offer to the Palestinians will be waiting for them at a time when they are ready to negotiate, considering that the stalemate in the negotiations benefited the Israelis by confiscating land, while the Palestinians received more European aid.
The US President’s advisor said that consultations are still ongoing regarding the sale of F-35s to the UAE, and that the Trump administration understands Israel’s security concerns, stressing the need to take into account the fact that Iran borders the UAE.
