In a first, an Israeli woman is set to donate a kidney to a patient in the UAE, almost a year after the Trump administration brokered a historic normalization agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.
Shani Markowitz Manshar, 39, will undergo surgery at Sheba Medical Center on Wednesday to donate one of her kidneys to a patient in Abu Dhabi as part of an organ donation program between the two countries.
Speaking to the Emirati news outlet Khaleej Times, global media spokesperson for Sheba Medical Center Steve Walz said: “There will be more organ transplants and medical tourism like this coming down the line in the next couple of months.”
“We are now able to do things that weren’t possible before thanks to the Abraham Accords, and helping citizens in the Gulf is a top priority for us,” he added.
The procedure is part of a three-way kidney exchange, the report said. Manshar’s mother will also receive a kidney transplant at the same hospital this week, while a patient at Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa will receive a transplant from a donor in the UAE.
Prof. Eitan Moore of the Sheba Transplant Center told Ynet that the organ donation program was “very significant.”
“Now I can talk to my colleagues in Abu Dhabi freely, thanks to the Abraham Accords,” he said. “This is a step that may promote peace. When I spoke to the doctors from Abu Dhabi, they said that they were also happy to be partners for the first time.”
Earlier this month, the UAE formally opened its embassy in Israel, a week after Jerusalem opened its own mission in Abu Dhabi.
The Trump-led Abraham Accords also included normalization deals with other Muslim and Arab countries, including Sudan, Morocco and Bahrain.
The UAE’s decision to establish ties with Israel sparked outrage among the Palestinian leadership, which called it a “stab in the back.”
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