When Tamar Smulowicz moved from Israel to the United Arab Emirates after the two countries normalized relations six years ago, it was the beginning of a chapter in a place she never dared think of as home.
Her husband had been recruited for an information technology job by the government in the port city of Ras Al Khaimah. They arrived in summer, and their daughters, then nearly 5 and 8, quickly made the pool their second home. Soon, the girls enrolled in a school with an English-language curriculum, where Ms. Smulowicz made friends with mothers from backgrounds, religions and nationalities she rarely, if ever, encountered in Israel.
“It was a once in a lifetime option,” Ms. Smulowicz said in an interview this month. “We were welcomed,” she added. “We felt safe basically from the beginning.”
But a cascade of regional wars and domestic threats is now testing the confidence of Israelis and Jews in the wealthy Gulf nation.
Today, Jewish life in the Emirates has grown quieter and less visible. Religious symbols have disappeared, and gatherings have moved into private. Many have become more guarded about their online presence and their willingness to speak to the media. Some are reconsidering how openly to identify themselves as Israeli or Jewish, while others weigh whether they can still build a life in a nation they once considered a haven.
That shift began with the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which killed more than 1,200 people, and Israel’s devastating war in Gaza, which killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and prompted accusations of genocide against Israel. As Israel widened its military campaigns across the region, international condemnation mounted, and Israel and Israelis faced increasing isolation.
Then, in 2024, an Israeli rabbi was kidnapped and killed in the U.A.E. Three Uzbek nationals were initially arrested in connection with the killing. Three people were later sentenced to death, while a fourth received a prison sentence. The authorities did not disclose the identities of those sentenced.
The Israeli attack on Iran in 2025, joined by the U.S., and the renewed U.S.-Israeli war in 2026, brought conflict to the doorstep. This year, Iran fired waves of missiles and drones at the Emirates, striking or sending debris into several sites, including airports and hotels. For Israeli and Jewish residents, not only was the country where they lived under attack, but Israeli officials were warning that Iran could specifically target them.
In late September, after what the authorities said was an aborted plot to crash a jetliner from Dubai to Tel Aviv in a Sept. 11-inspired suicide mission, the sense of alarm grew more intense. The low-cost carrier FlyDubai had become a major operator on the Dubai-Tel Aviv route, running as many as 10 daily flights.
Together, these events have shaken the U.A.E.’s image as a place where Jewish life could flourish openly and securely, according to several Israelis and Jewish members living in the Emirates. Community members say some people have left. Many others, like Ms. Smulowicz and her family, have stayed, learning to lead their lives with caution.
It’s “a moment of sobriety,” said Rabbi Yehuda Sarna, who previously served as the chief rabbi of the Jewish Council of the Emirates, and lectures at the New York University campus in the capital, Abu Dhabi.
‘A renaissance’
For years, Israelis and Jews, traveling on Western or other foreign passports, had come to the Emirates to live and work. A small network took shape, even renting a villa to use as a synagogue.
After the U.A.E. and Israel normalized relations under the Abraham Accords in 2020, Emirati officials embraced the community’s growth, pledged to protect it and even introduced Holocaust education into school curricula.
The new warmth was not universal. Even before the Gaza war, a poll by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy in April 2023 found that 69 percent of Emiratis surveyed believed the Abraham Accords would negatively affect the region. But there was no public protest in the Emirates, an authoritarian country where the government brooks no dissent and where most residents are foreign nationals dependent on work visas.
Soon after, Israelis, both secular and religious, began arriving in the Emirates. Yarmulkes appeared on city streets. Families and friends gathered to braid challah, the traditional Jewish bread. Weddings and Passover dinners, some drawing hundreds, were held in public. Kosher restaurants and grocery stores opened, their signs visible to passers-by. In early 2023, the Abrahamic Family House, a complex that includes a mosque, a church and a synagogue, opened in Abu Dhabi.
“That was a huge renaissance,” said Marcy Grossman, director of the American Jewish Committee in Abu Dhabi, who also served as Canada’s ambassador to the U.A.E. from 2019 to 2022. “Everyone was blown away.”
The growth soon showed up in the numbers, from trade to tourism.
The U.A.E. foreign ministry reported more than $14.5 billion in trade between Israel and the U.A.E. from Sept. 2020 through May 2026.
At least 120 weekly flights also operated directly between the two countries during periods of normal service, the ministry said, with passenger traffic between the two countries reaching approximately 1.53 million in 2025.
The influx of visitors inspired Ms. Smulowicz and her partner, Ania Skinder, a Polish-Australian national, to start Adventurous Camel in July 2023, offering tours in Hebrew, Polish and English. They wanted to showcase Ras Al Khaimah’s heritage and quieter appeal as an alternative to the glitz of Dubai and Abu Dhabi.
For a time, the momentum seemed unstoppable. More Israelis arrived, more businesses opened, more families put down roots.
Then came the Oct. 7 attack on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza, leaving Israelis anxious about their status in the U.A.E. and the future of their business.
“It was scary,” Ms. Smulowicz said. “You didn’t know what happens next.”
Retreat from public life
Since the Oct. 7 assault, Israelis have kept a lower profile, often at the encouragement of Emirati officials, several community members told The New York Times. Many people contacted for this article declined to speak or agreed to do so only on the condition of anonymity for security reasons.
Restaurants and cafes removed signs advertising their kosher offerings and scaled back or removed their social media presence. At one kosher grocery store, the blinds were drawn and a security guard photographed shoppers’ passports or identification cards at the door.
Outside a Jewish nursery school, guards in dark sunglasses stood watch as a police car sat nearby. Jewish and Israeli leaders said that some entrepreneurs seeking investment in Dubai had grown cautious about revealing their identities.
Jewish residents brought inside their mezuzas, small containers with biblical scrolls traditionally affixed to door posts. The Abrahamic Family House in Abu Dhabi, among the few places Jewish worshipers could gather and publicly pray, closed at the onset of the war on Iran.
The U.A.E. foreign ministry said in a statement that it upholds the “safety, security, and well-being of all members of society, without exception.” The ministry cited the “country’s enduring values of tolerance, coexistence, and respect for diversity.”
The retreat from public life has come amid a retrenchment of Jewish communities elsewhere, in response to rising antisemitism and deadly attacks targeting Jews.
“People changed the way they operate in the world,” Ms. Grossman said.
‘No better place’
After Oct. 7 and the outbreak of war with Hamas, some in Israel moved abroad, even as residents of Gaza remained trapped in the besieged and devastated enclave. A young entrepreneur named Or Eliaz was among several Israelis who chose to move to the U.A.E. though other Israelis were starting to leave.
At the time, with economic and security concerns spiking, Mr. Eliaz said Israel was not “the right place” where a young person doing business could thrive, he said. (A friend of his was killed in the Oct. 7 attack, he said, and a cousin kidnapped. She has since been released.)
“I wanted a new and different opportunity for myself,” Mr. Eliaz said on a recent evening at a Dubai mall. “We want to stay somewhere peaceful.”
A 2022 trip to Dubai, while visiting the Gulf to attend the World Cup soccer tournament in Qatar, introduced a new life. Mr. Eliaz has since built a company producing promotional content and podcasts. His family, including his wife, father, brother, and his brother’s fiancée, has all moved to the Emirates.
His work has put him in contact with people from across the region, including Iranians and Pakistanis. He acknowledged that in the Emirates, where freedom of speech is curtailed, it was difficult to know what they really thought of him. For Mr. Eliaz, though, these limits were a trade-off he was willing to accept.
“I feel much more secure to live my life here than in Israel,” he said.
For now, the Jewish and Israeli population in the Emirates is nervously watching the war with Iran and other regional developments, unsure what might come next.
Rabbi Sarna said he hoped the pendulum would swing back, allowing them to live more openly again and with a greater sense of security in the U.A.E.
“There is this feeling that we are perhaps on the low end of a cycle,” Mr. Sarna said in a video interview from New York. “But it’s a cycle and we are going to be on our way up.”
The post For Israelis and Jews in the U.A.E., an Eroding Sense of Security appeared first on New York Times.
