The UAE warns against the risk of regional spillover from the Gaza war. The powerhouse of the Gulf, the United Arab Emirates, issued a warning on Friday, stating that it was working “relentlessly” to ensure a humanitarian truce and that there was a genuine risk of a regional spillover from the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza.

The battle derailed Israel’s hopes of normalizing relations with Saudi Arabia, a Muslim powerhouse after the UAE became the most well-known Arab nation to sign the 2020 Abrahamic Accords, a set of agreements with that country. Foreign Affairs Minister Noura al-Kaabi said at a policy conference in Abu Dhabi, “As we continue working to stop this war, we cannot ignore the wider context and the necessity to turn down the regional temperature that is approaching a boiling point.”

“The risk of regional spillover and further escalation is real, as is the risk that extremist groups will take advantage of the situation to advance ideologies that will keep us locked in cycles of violence.” The United Arab Emirates (UAE), a significant oil producer, sees Islamist organizations like Hamas, which was affiliated with Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, as an existential danger to the Middle East.

When Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the current president of Egypt, overthrew Muslim Brotherhood president Mohamed Mursi in 2013, the UAE backed him.

“Every effort must be made to protect civilians and immediately put an end to this conflict,” Kaabi stated.

Arab nations, alarmed by Israel’s shelling of the Gaza Strip in its conflict with Hamas, are worried about the steep increase in civilian deaths as well as Israel’s embargo of the heavily populated coastal enclave.

The UAE announced its intention to provide medical care to one thousand Palestinian youngsters from Gaza. Still, it did not specify how they would go from the Israeli-besieged area to the Gulf state. The decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict saw its most recent battle break out on October 7, when militants from Hamas stormed the border and launched an offensive.

Israel claims that Hamas captured over 200 prisoners and killed 1,400 people, most of them civilians. At least 9,601 individuals have died as a result of Israel’s subsequent shelling of the tiny, densely populated Palestinian enclave, which is home to 2.3 million people. Of them, 3,760 are children, according to Gaza health officials.

“We are working relentlessly to reach an immediate and full humanitarian ceasefire so that life-saving aid can be delivered to the Gaza Strip,” Kaabi stated.

Bahrain, a neighbor of the United Arab Emirates and a signatory to the Abrahamic Accords said on Thursday that its envoy to Israel had departed the country “a while ago” and that the Israeli ambassador in Manama had returned home.

It was unclear from the official announcement if this meant the Israeli envoy had been expelled. The United States Fifth Fleet is based in a Gulf state, according to the Israeli Foreign Ministry, and ties with them are stable.