ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates – An El Al plane adorned with a Star of David flew from Israel to the United Arab Emirates on Monday, with a high-ranking American and Israeli delegation to Abu Dhabi on the first direct mail passenger flight. between the two countries.
The Israeli airline’s flight marked the implementation of the historic agreement negotiated across the United States to normalize relations between the two nations and the long-standing ties between them that have evolved over the years of shared enmity toward Iran.
With the United States as intermediaries, Israel and the United Arab Emirates agreed before this month on paintings on normalization, making it the third Arab country to have complete with Israel, after Egypt and Jordan.Unlike these two nations, Israel has never waged war against the United Arab Emirates and expects to have a much warmer hip.
The U.S. delegation included President Donald Trump’s senior and son-in-law adviser Jared Kushner and national security adviser Robert O’Brien, represented by Israel through national security adviser Meir Ben-Shabbat and other senior officials.
In a rite at Abu Dhabi airport, Kushner called the “historic breakthrough” and expressed his hope that “it will be the first of many” such flights.
“There is a wonderful urgency among the people of both countries to break the old barriers, get to know each other, forge new and very deep friendships,” he said.
Abu Dhabi’s state television burst onto his screen to show the plane on the runway and broadcast comments from all officials, adding to Ben-Shabat, who spoke in Arabic and Hebrew.No Emirati official spoke at the ceremony.
“We arrived here in full sun and in front of everyone on a plane with the flag of Israel with our American friends,” Ben-Shabbat said.”Israel and the United Arab Emirates have much in common.Our region is full of demanding situations and threats.But we have the strength and skill for them.”
Flight El Al, with the number LY971 after the UAE foreign calling code, entered Saudi airspace shortly after takeoff and then flew over the capital, Riyadh, marking another historic first for Israel and marking the kingdom’s acceptance for the Resolution of the United Arab Emirates.
“They were very kind to allow us to fly over their airspace, which they had never done before, for an Israeli advertising aircraft,” Kushner said.
Kushner and other officials said they expect more Arab countries to stay in the United Arab Emirates to identify relations with Israel, even without a peace agreement with the Palestinians, said it would do so to Saudi Arabia after the visit.
Saudi King Salman, along with other Arab Gulf leaders to varying degrees, keep his boycott of Israel against Palestinians who discharge an independent state. Any scheduled flight between Israel and the United Arab Emirates would require Saudi Arabia’s authorization to be profitable.-hours, 20 minutes flight would have taken more than seven hours.
The plane decorated with words for peace in Arabic, Hebrew and English over the pilot’s window.
The Israeli delegation will spend the night in the capital Abu Dhabi before returning home to El Al LY972, a reference to Israel’s foreign appeal code.
Private planes have already flown between the two countries in secret talks, and Abu Dhabi’s Etihad Airways flew cargo ships to Israel before offering coronavirus assistance to Palestinians.the White House of Israel and the United Arab Emirates build relations.
Since then, phone calls have been connected and the leader of the United Arab Emirates has issued a decree officially ending the decades-long boycott of Israel. Some Israeli corporations have already signed agreements with their Emirati counterparts, and Monday is expected to pave the way for more industrial cooperation.
The United Arab Emirates promoted the agreement as a tool to force Israel to finalize its controversial plan to annex parts of the West Bank sought through the Palestinians for its long-term status.It can also help the Emirates obtain complex U.S. weapons systems that were inaccessible in the past., like the F-35 fighter. Today, Israel is the only country in the region to have stealth fighter jets.
The Palestinians, however, have vehemently opposed normalization, as it gets rid of one of its few benefits in the moribund peace talks with Israel.Palestinians organized public protests and angrily burned the flag of the United Arab Emirates.
In the West Bank, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said it is “very painful” to see the robbery occur.He also criticized El Al for opting for a plane called Kiryat Gat, a city in southern Israel built near the ruins of what were once Arab villages before the settlement of Israel in 1948.
During the Arab-Israeli War at the time, thousands of Egyptian infantrymen were surrounded by Israeli forces, adding Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser.
“We are very a pain today when an Israeli plane lands in the Emirates, under the flight called Kiryat Gat, the agreement he built on the occupied Palestinian lands of the fallujah village in which Gamal Abdel Nasser was trapped, in a flagrant violation of the Arab position in the face of the Arab-Israeli conflict,” he said.
The Shtayyeh administration has broken ties with the United States and rejected Trump’s Middle East plan, unfairly favoring Israel.
Referring to the Palestinians, Kushner said that “the few who have criticized this peace agreement are the ones who have a long history of failures and trapping their other people in anguish and poverty.”
But he said he sent a message of “hope” to the Palestinians.
“When they are ready, the whole region is very pleased that they come together and move them forward.But they can’t get stuck in the past,” he said.
Israelis look forward to the perspective of mutual embassies, the expansion of tourism in the Gulf and the consolidation of trade opportunities with a country that stores its penchant for generation and innovation.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promoted the agreement as a validation of his vision that regional peace requires Palestinian acceptance or is responsible for land transfer.
But he was criticized by supporters at home for giving up his dreams of annexation and tacitly accepting the sale of F-35 that could undermine Israel’s regional superiority.Kushner reiterated America’s commitment to maintain the qualitative merit of the Israeli army over its Arab neighbors.
For Trump, the deal gives him a key foreign policy victory as he faces a difficult re-election campaign, and is also helping to solidify an emerging anti-Iranian alliance that includes Israel and pro-Western Arab governments.
“Right now, the risk we see in the region is Iran,” Kushner said.
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