'Give me your hand, Zayed': How a meeting of two rulers led to UAE's formation

They met like tribal chieftains, Bedu-style, in a simple tent in the desert at a place that marked the border of their two domains.

When it was over, a momentous decision had been made on the strength of a simple handshake: the emirates of Abu Dhabi and Dubai would come together as one people and one country.

It was February 18, 1968, when Sheikh Zayed, Ruler of Abu Dhabi, and Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed, Ruler of Dubai, reached a formal agreement that would bind them together and lead to the formation, three years later, of the United Arab Emirates.

The moment of their decision, though, was anything but formal, marked by the growing friendship between the two men and their respect for each other.

Ahmed Khaleefa Al Suwaidi stands to read the statement of declaration of the establishment of the UAE on December 2, 1972. Alittihad

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice President and Ruler of Dubai, recalled the meeting in a series of tweets in 2018.

“From that day we started, from that day we agreed and from that day we began our march together,” he said.

Then a young man not yet 20, and newly graduated from officer training at a UK military academy, Sheikh Mohammed recalled the exchange between his father and the UAE Founding Father.

“So Rashid, what do you think? Shall we create a union?” Sheikh Zayed asked the older of the two Rulers.

“Give me your hand, Zayed,” Sheikh Mohammed recalls his father replying. “Let us shake upon the agreement. You will be President.”

“Fifty years are nothing in the age of a country, but with Zayed every year was worth 50 in work and achievements,” Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid said on Twitter.

“Our nation remembers this day so as not to forget our beginnings and not to forget good intentions and to stay aware that we are of the desert, we began there and we have reached space.”

What led to the unification between Abu Dhabi and Dubai?

The meeting 57 years ago was held in Seih Al Sedira, a small hill on the Abu Dhabi side of the border and close to the community of Al Sameeh, now grown in size and bisected by the E11 on the approach to Ghantoot.

The road to Al Sameeh, though, had been anything but straightforward. Less than a month earlier, the cash-strapped socialist Labour government of the UK, had, without warning, decided to withdraw from the Arabian Gulf, a sphere of British influence for mo