The foreign ministers of India, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and the US will hold a virtual meeting on Monday (10:15pm IST) to boost cooperation and coordination.

External Affairs Minister of India Dr S Jaishankar is on a visit to Israel where he held bilateral meeting with his counterpart Yair Lipid and also called on Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.

On Monday, Jaishankar and Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid will hold a meeting from West Jerusalem with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who will join them virtually.

After the signing of the Abraham Accord of 2020, this meeting comes as a crucial part of the Israeli government’s efforts to build strong international relations that should strengthen its position in the region and in the world and contribute in offering a strong and smart push for the peace process between Tel Aviv and its neighbours, the office of Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said in a statement.

The accord had led to normalisation of relations between Israel and the UAE which subsequently also included Bahrain. The Abraham Accords refer collectively to agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (the IsraelUnited Arab Emirates normalisation agreement) and Bahrain, respectively (the BahrainIsrael normalisation agreement).

With the meeting of these four countries, the stress will be on now these close allies and partner can work together on various fronts – security, Iran, technology, trade, climate change.

Ahead of this Quad meeting, there was a UAE-Israel-US trilateral meeting held in Washington last week where the foreign ministers focused on the issue of “peaceful coexistence”.

“The outcomes of the meeting of HH Sheikh @ABZayed with the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the #US and #Israel, were remarkable and important, including the announcement of the two working groups “Peaceful Coexistence” and “Water and Energy” between the three countries,” Ambassador Mohamed Al Khaja, UAE’s envoy to the US wrote in a tweet.

Israel’s foreign minister wrote, “At the center of my visit here is the concern about Iran’s race to a nuclear capability. Iran is becoming a nuclear threshold country. Every day that passes, every delay in the negotiations, brings Iran closer to a nuclear bomb.”

He went on to add, “I don’t want to conclude with fear, but with hope. We are writing a new chapter in our history. There is an alliance of moderates. Focused on life, focused on hope, focused on optimism, focused on looking forward.”

India has been working very closely with UAE, Israel on solar technology. The three countries signed a pact initiated by the International Federation of Indo-Israel Chambers of Commerce (IFFIICC) to work of producing robotic solar cleaning technology.

Interestingly, ahead of this meet Israel will officially join the Indian initiative – the International Solar Alliance (ISA) today.