An Israeli women has reportedly been sentenced to death in the UAE after a court found her guilty of possessing cocaine in Abu Dhabi..

The 43-year-old, named by Israeli media as Fidaa Kiwan, was arrested in March 2021 days after arriving in the country.

More than half a kilo of the drug was found after her apartment was searched by police.

She is said to have claimed the drugs were not hers and her legal team is set to launch an appeal against her sentence.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry says it is “handling it” but is yet to release a longer statement. Sky News has contacted the UAE government for comment.

Relations between Israel and the UAE have been warm in recent years, following the signing of the Abraham Accords in 2020 and normalisation of relations.

Many Israelis have since taken advantage of direct flights to visit the UAE on holiday and the UAE is set to invest billions of dollars in Israel.

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Last December Naftali Bennett became the first Israeli Prime Minister to pay an official visit to Abu Dhabi and the Israeli president also visited the Gulf state recently.

The UAE takes an extremely strict approach towards drug use and it is not unusual for the death penalty to be applied in guilty cases – this is often converted into a long sentence on appeal however.

Sky News has contacted the UAE for comment on the case.

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