Is the United Arab Emirates paying $2,000 for each Israeli citizen wounded in the conflict with Hamas? No, that's not true: There is no reference to any donations from the Emirates to Israel in news reports or in government websites of UAE and Israel. There is no evidence that the UAE is compensating Israelis injured in the conflict sparked by Hamas' October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) on TikTok on November 27, 2023. The video depicted a Muslim cleric speaking Algerian dialect, making the claim without specifying a source for his information. He was delivering a Friday sermon, Islam's main mass of the week, on October 13, 2023. Lead Stories was able to find his name, Abdel-Aziz Chihab, and locate his account on TikTok @abdelazizchihab7.
He said (translated from Arabic to English by Lead Stories staff):
The UAE is low and damned. It is paying $2,000 in compensation for each wounded Israeli.
Text overlay on the video (as translated) read:
The Emirates donate to Israel $2,000 for each wounded person (two crying emojis).
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Wed Nov 29 08:33:16 2023 UTC)
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) announced on October 15, 2023, that the UAE has contributed $20 million to support the agency's humanitarian response in the Gaza Strip, bringing its total donations to the Palestinian territories to $55 million since June 2023. The UAE has also airlifted 68 tons of vital food supplies to Gaza in October 2023, said the U.K.-based news website National News. The supplies preceded a national campaign in the UAE to provide relief aid to Palestinians, which kicked off on October 15, 2023, said the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
A Lead Stories search on November 29, 2023, of the UAE government portal (archived here), the Israeli prime minister's office (archived here) and Israel's daily Haaretz newspaper (archived here), which normally publishes credible news on developments in Israel and the Middle East, using the words "$2,000 to wounded Israelis," did not yield any relevant results.
