The US administration froze the “Abraham Fund”, which was announced after the signing of normalization agreements between Israel on the one hand and the UAE and Bahrain last September, according to Hebrew media.

And the Israeli economic website, Globes, said, on Wednesday, quoting unnamed American and Israeli sources, that the Biden administration had frozen the fund indefinitely.

There is talk of a joint investment fund between the US administration, the UAE and Israel, according to the same source.

The fund was set up as early as last October, and within three months it examined hundreds of applications to fund various projects, including in Israel.

The fund approved more than 12 projects in the fields of energy and financial technology, and large financial institutions from the United States approached it with the aim of participating in the investment and increasing the fund’s capital, according to the same source.

The fund was to pump, according to its founding statement, more than $3 billion into the development investment market for the private sector, with the aim of enhancing economic cooperation and encouraging prosperity in the Middle East.

But the election of Joe Biden suspended the activity of the fund. After he was sworn in as president of the United States last January, the fund manager, Aryeh Lightstone, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump, resigned, and no successor was appointed by the new US administration, according to the same source.

Although the Biden administration supports peace agreements between Israel and Arab countries during the Trump era, it is less enthusiastic about allocating money to them from its budget, according to Globes.

For its part, the private channel (12) commented on Globy’s report by saying that “the beautiful words of Washington and Abu Dhabi regarding the investment of billions of dollars in Israel have become a dead letter.”

She added that the freezing of the “Abraham Fund” was one of the reasons for the establishment of the Emirati Fund for Investment in Israel, which was announced last March.

She pointed out that the Emirati fund, which was created with a value of 10 billion dollars, is also faltering.

Since Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed announced the establishment of the fund, work on it has not progressed in any significant way, with the exception of a general dialogue between representatives of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs and their counterparts in the UAE on ways to advance the activities of the fund, according to the same source.