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Fresh details of a secret arms deal negotiation between the United Arab Emirates and Israel have come to light, following a leak of internal emails from Israel’s largest defense contractor, Elbit Systems. The correspondence, published for the first time by Haaretz and Drop Site News, lays bare how Abu Dhabi accelerated push for the purchase of Israeli intelligence and surveillance drones just weeks after a deadly cross-border attack by Yemen’s Houthi movement in early 2022.

The hacked emails, which cover a period from 2021 through the start of 2023, outline early discussions between Elbit Systems and UAE parties over a package of Israeli defense technology. The proposed deal includes Hermes 900 reconnaissance drones, SkyEye wide-area surveillance sensors, ground control infrastructure, as well as personnel training and long-term logistical support. According to the leaked documents, the entire transaction was reclassified as an “urgent priority” immediately after the January 17, 2022 Houthi missile and drone assault on Abu Dhabi that targeted key infrastructure including oil tanker facilities and Abu Dhabi International Airport.

The cache of executive emails was obtained by Handala, an anonymous online hacking group that open-source intelligence researchers claim has ties to the Iranian government. Both Haaretz and Drop Site News independently verified the authenticity of the documents before publishing their reporting. Initial projections valued the core drone deal at $154 million, with optional system upgrades pushing the total projected contract value to $225 million. To date, the leaked correspondence offers no confirmation on whether the ordered drones and systems have been delivered to the UAE.

To understand the scope of the technology on offer, the SkyEye surveillance system integrates high-resolution electro-optical cameras that allow aircraft to capture vast swathes of territory in real time. Footage captured by the system can be reviewed from multiple vantage points, enabling operators to trace moving objects and personnel back to their point of origin. The Hermes 900, Elbit’s flagship medium-altitude long-endurance drone, is designed for advanced reconnaissance and surveillance missions, with a maximum payload capacity of 990 pounds. Multiple defense industry reports note the platform can also be configured to carry up to eight surface-to-air missiles for offensive operations.

Internal correspondence shows that just two months after the 2022 Houthi attack, a senior leader from the Israeli Ministry of Defense’s arms development directorate traveled to Abu Dhabi to present a formal proposal for the Hermes 900 sale. The proposal framed the drones as a critical operational solution to extend cross-border surveillance capabilities, specifically to detect incoming missile and drone launches before they reach UAE territory.

The emerging drone deal negotiations come against a backdrop of rapidly warming bilateral defense ties between Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi, which date back to the 2020 Abraham Accords. Brokered by the first Trump administration, the normalization agreement between Israel, the UAE, Bahrain, and Morocco was explicitly positioned as a framework to deepen security and defense cooperation across the region. This new leak confirms long-held analyst assessments that cutting-edge Israeli defense technology has been a key driver of growing security partnerships between Israel and Gulf Arab states.

Beyond the core Hermes 900 and SkyEye package, the emails also include passing references to two additional Elbit Systems products: the SkyStriker loitering munition – more commonly known as a “suicide drone” – and the smaller Hermes 650 reconnaissance drone. Today, the UAE stands as one of Israel’s closest partners in the Arab and Muslim world, and has joined Israel and the United States in a series of coordinated military strikes targeting Iranian assets across the Middle East in recent months. As early as May of this year, Middle East Eye first reported that Israel and the UAE had launched a joint defense investment fund to develop and acquire new advanced weapons systems, amid escalating regional tensions with Iran.

The Trump administration finds itself mired in a diplomatic and military quagmire of its own making over Iran, with new revelations showing the U.S. military is actively crowdsourcing innovative strategies from defense experts to break the prolonged stalemate and force Tehran into a deal favorable to President Donald Trump.

According to a Monday report from CNN, a recent email circulated by an intelligence officer within U.S. Central Command (Centcom) explicitly called for “new creative and unconventional ways to pressure and punish Iran”, a signal that senior defense officials never anticipated the ongoing conflict would stretch on for as long as it has. While a Centcom spokesperson pushed back on framing the move as unusual, noting the command has a long track record of pursuing innovative problem-solving, the public request for outside ideas underscores the lack of a clear path forward for the White House.

The intermittent, tit-for-tat military escalation between the U.S., Israel and Iran that began in late February has triggered cascading global consequences. In response to the hostilities, Iran moved to close off shipping access through the Strait of Hormuz, a critical chokepoint that carries roughly 20% of the world’s daily oil supplies. The closure sent global energy prices soaring, a development that has directly hit the economic interests of Trump’s core voter base ahead of any potential election.

Amid growing regional pressure to de-escalate, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman emphasized in a Sunday phone call with Trump the urgent need for dialogue to cool tensions, urging all parties to prioritize a truce that would open the door for negotiated diplomatic solutions.

The situation has been further muddled by conflicting public statements over the status of talks. Last Saturday, Trump announced he had called off planned military strikes against Iran and claimed negotiations between Washington and Tehran would officially kick off on Monday. Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday, Trump argued that Iran had clear motivation to negotiate: “Obviously, they don’t want to be attacked. Now what we’re doing is we’re talking to them in the form of a negotiation. It begins tomorrow afternoon.”

But Iranian officials have flatly denied Trump’s claim that bilateral talks are underway. Esmaeil Baghaei, spokesperson for Iran’s foreign ministry, clarified during a press briefing that Tehran is currently holding only “constructive” discussions with Oman, focused on establishing new secure shipping routes through the Strait of Hormuz. “We are not currently negotiating with the United States. Our negotiations are with Oman to secure passage through the Strait of Hormuz,” Baghaei stated. He added that the status quo in the strait will remain in place as long as the U.S. maintains its naval blockade of Iranian ports, and urged both regional and international powers to respond to Iran’s responsible diplomatic outreach with a constructive approach.

A controversial plan by Israeli far-right national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir to place Nile crocodiles in moats surrounding facilities holding Palestinian prisoners has been temporarily blocked by a Jerusalem District Court ruling, Israeli media has confirmed.

The scheme, which had secured backing from Ben Gvir’s own ministry and the Israel Prison Service (IPS), had already seen preliminary construction work underway: crews had begun digging trenches around a portion of Ketziot Prison, located in Israel’s Negev desert. Under the proposal, predatory Nile crocodiles would be stationed in these newly dug moats as an added security perimeter around the prison complex.

The court’s temporary injunction was issued just hours after Israeli animal welfare group Let the Animals Live filed a legal petition against the plan, naming Environmental Protection Minister Idit Silman, Ben Gvir, and the IPS as respondents. Notably, the legal challenge centered exclusively on risks to the crocodiles and potential harm to prison personnel, rather than addressing the longstanding documented abuses faced by Palestinian detainees held in Israeli custody.

The pathway for Ben Gvir’s proposal was cleared earlier in July 2025, when Minister Silman issued a regulatory order reclassifying Nile crocodiles from a protected native species to a “tended animal,” removing legal barriers to their transfer and deployment at the prison site. The petition disputes this regulatory change, arguing Silman sidelined formal input from legal experts and the Nature and Parks Authority, and calling for the crocodile’s protected status to be reinstated.

In his Sunday ruling, Judge Avraham Rubin found that the claims of potential harm to the crocodiles were serious enough to warrant immediate intervention. “The claims regarding the expected harm to the crocodiles merit investigation and justify issuing an order prohibiting the transfer, or any action related to locating or preparing crocodiles for transfer,” Rubin wrote in his decision. The temporary injunction will remain in effect until a full ruling on the case, with Silman, Ben Gvir, and the IPS given until Wednesday to submit formal responses to the court.

Israeli environmental and conservation bodies have voiced opposition to the plan from its earliest stages. Both the Environmental Protection Ministry and the Nature and Parks Authority have publicly stated that Silman’s reclassification of the Nile crocodile lacks any scientific foundation, and have echoed concerns that relocating the large predators to a high-traffic prison site puts correctional staff at unnecessary risk.

The crocodile moat scheme is only the latest in a string of harsh measures pushed by Ben Gvir aimed at worsening already poor detention conditions for Palestinians held in Israeli custody. Previous proposals and implemented policies have included restrictions on family visitations, reduced food access, deliberate denial of medical care, extended solitary confinement, and reports of routine torture.

The court ruling came on the same day that video footage of Ben Gvir circulated widely on social media, showing the far-right politician mocking a female Palestinian detainee who had raised complaints about inhumane conditions inside her facility.

According to data collected by Palestinian prisoner advocacy organizations, more than 9,600 Palestinians are currently held in Israeli detention facilities as of 2025. That population includes 84 women and 350 minor children, with widespread documentation of ongoing abuses including medical neglect, physical assault, sexual violence, and rape that human rights groups characterize as systematic torture against the detainee population.

Dawn breaks slowly over the spread-out tent homes and livestock enclosures of Ras al-Ahmar, a small Palestinian community tucked into the arid northern Jordan Valley. The only sound cutting through the still morning air is the desperate bleating of thirsty cattle and sheep, waiting for water that will not flow from the community’s destroyed wells.

Just days after Israeli military forces demolished three of the village’s primary water wells, hundreds of residents are locked in a desperate race to secure enough water to sustain their households, their subsistence crops, and their grazing livestock — all in one of the occupied West Bank’s most parched, water-scarce regions.

For 60-year-old Ali Bani Odeh, the demolition of the wells was far more than the loss of basic infrastructure. A father of four and grandfather to 14 children, Odeh has spent his entire adult life working this land, tending crops and raising animals to support his extended family. Today, he and dozens of other local families face an uncertain future: with no consistent water source, it is unclear how much longer they can remain on their ancestral land.

“Water is everything for us,” Odeh told reporters from Middle East Eye. “Without water, we cannot live. We need it for our families, our sheep and our crops. Since the wells were destroyed, we have been forced to bring water from town at a much higher cost, and even then, we’re not always allowed to pass.”

Families are now forced to haul water from distant urban centers at prices three times the standard rate, while Israeli military checkpoints and strict movement restrictions often block or delay water tankers from reaching the isolated village entirely.

Abdullah Bisharat, head of the Ras al-Ahmar village council, described the destroyed wells as the beating heart of the community. “The wells were the lifeline of this community,” Bisharat said. According to his accounting, the three wells supplied more than 47 local families, totaling more than 600 residents, and irrigated roughly 7,500 dunams (more than 1,850 acres) of working farmland. They also provided water for thousands of sheep and goats, the primary source of household income for nearly all families in the community.

“Their destruction has affected every aspect of daily life, from drinking water and agriculture to livestock, leaving dozens of families struggling to meet their most basic needs,” Bisharat added.

Residents note that the demolition of the wells marks the most severe escalation in a months-long water crisis driven by repeated attacks from Israeli settlers. For months, settlers have repeatedly cut the above-ground pipelines that brought water to the community, forcing families to already rely on overpriced water tankers. This attack, however, eliminated the community’s last independent water source by destroying the wells themselves.

Obeida Bani Odeh, Ali’s son, says the loss of the wells threatens not just his family’s livelihood, but their ability to remain in Ras al-Ahmar at all. “We cannot survive here without water,” he said. “For months, the pipelines supplying our community were repeatedly cut, and we had to bring water from nearby towns, often at three times the usual cost. Now the wells have been destroyed, and there is no reliable source of water left for our families or our livestock.”

He explained that the crisis extends far beyond water scarcity. Frequent settler violence and strict movement controls have made it nearly impossible to bring in not just water, but animal feed and other essential supplies. “The settlers attack everyone, from the young to the old,” Obeida said. “They want to make people afraid and force them to leave. But we have been living on this land for generations.”

Today, roughly 700,000 Israeli settlers reside in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, spread across more than 300 formal settlements and unauthorized outposts. The International Court of Justice has repeatedly ruled that all Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory violate international law, a finding that Israel has repeatedly rejected.

Settler violence and targeted attacks against Palestinian herding and farming communities in the West Bank have spiked dramatically in recent years. United Nations data shows that between January 2023 and April 2026, at least 5,910 Palestinians have been internally displaced from their homes in the West Bank as a direct result of settler violence.

Aref Daraghmeh, a prominent Palestinian human rights activist working in the Jordan Valley, says the demolition of water infrastructure in Ras al-Ahmar is part of a broader, systematic campaign to take control of the region’s limited natural resources. “Water has become a silent war against Palestinians in the Jordan Valley,” Daraghmeh told Middle East Eye. “The occupation has taken control of many Palestinian water sources, while the water available to Palestinian communities is insufficient for agriculture and sustaining life on the land.”

Daraghmeh explains that restricted water access has gutted Palestinian agricultural activity across the Jordan Valley, making it increasingly impossible for small-scale farmers and herders to maintain their livelihoods. As water becomes harder to access, communities face mounting pressure to abandon their land, even as Israeli settlement agriculture expands across the region. Strict movement controls have compounded these challenges, he added. “The Jordan Valley is effectively under closure,” Daraghmeh said. “Military checkpoints control movement, roads are restricted, and residents often have to wait for hours before they can enter or leave their communities.”

These restrictions also block farmers from accessing grazing lands and transporting livestock, crops, and supplies to market, piling additional pressure on communities already crippled by water scarcity.

For Ali Bani Odeh, however, leaving Ras al-Ahmar is not a choice he is willing to make. Displaced from his original family home as a child, he says he will not be forced to move again. “I have left before, but I will not leave this place,” Ali said. “If we leave, they will take over the land. We are staying because this is where our lives and our history are.”