In a major development for the Israelis, Saudi Arabia has officially allowed Israel flights to use their sovereign airspace for travelling to Dubai, making it the first direct flight.
With the newly achieved agreement of Saudi, the travel time between Israel and Dubai has greatly reduced, much to the relief of the country, which is commonly marked as “Occupied Palestine” in Arab maps.
The accomplishment came following talks between Saudi authorities and Jared Kushner, a senior adviser of White House, according to Reuters and Israeli media houses.
The White House adviser along with Middle East diplomats Avi Berkowitz and Brian Hook had taken the lead to restart the discussion regarding the airspace after they flew down to Saudi Arabia.
An official from the Donald Trump administration told reporters on Monday evening that they had successfully settled the issue pertaining to Israel and Saudi.
This agreement was reached upon a few hours prior to the takeoff of Israel’s first-ever commercial flight to the United Arab Emirates. With no overflight agreement in motion, there were chances of the Israir flight getting cancelled.
After signing the normalization deals between Sudan, Bahrain and UAE, Israelis are able to transfer to and fro these countries through direct flights this year.
These countries have agreed on the deals as their motives lie in the arms sales of the US. UAE has already begun reaping the fruits of this normalization as the White House has solemnized an arms deal that includes an advanced fighter jet.
“This should resolve any issues that should occur with Israeli carriers taking people from Israel to the UAE and back and to Bahrain,” the White House official told Reuters.
Kushner and other officers were due to talk to the Saudi Crown Prince of Mohammed bin Salman, the emir of Kuwait and the emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamam Al Thani in the latter half of this week.
One of the aims marked in the agenda was to urge the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member countries to dismantle the 3-year ban on Qatar.
This entails the removal of the air, land and sea blockade put on Qatar since June 2017 by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain-all GCC countries- and another non-GCC nation Egypt.
These nations had dissolved their relations with Doha following their claims of the country supporting “terrorism”. However, Doha has repeatedly slammed the accusations as there is “no legitimate justification” to support the claims.
Meanwhile, Saudi’s announcement to allow Israir (Israeli airline) to fly between Tel Aviv and Dubai using their airspace has permitted the flight to depart from Ben-Gurion Airport as per its original schedule.
Evidently, Israeli ministers were delighted with the completion of their milestone. Transportation Minister Miri Regev extended her congratulations to the Arab nation for their agreement. “I’m glad to see that after several long, tense hours of waiting and receiving many inquiries from concerned passengers and airline companies, the Saudis just gave their approval for the first Israeli commercial flight to depart tomorrow as planned. I wish all passengers a safe trip and a safe return,” the 55-year old’s Facebook post read.
On the other hand, things remain tense between the Saudi leaders as the elder King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud opposes the normalization deal with Israel while the Crown Prince is all into it.
The discussions took momentum after UAE officials stated that they won’t allow any Israeli flight to land in Dubai if Saudi Arabia doesn’t issue permission to use its airspace.
After a thorough evaluation by the Foreign Ministry, the department started the conversation with Saudi authorities in order to hasten the permit process.
Earlier in September, Saudi Arabia had declared that it will allow all flights to fly over its territory to reach UAE, after receiving a request from the neighbour. However, it did not specify Israel which led to speculations and concerns in the matter.
Nevertheless, the latest approval has opened a faster channel for the Israeli flights that are prebooked already with thousands of passengers scheduled to fly to Dubai, more easily and quicker this time.
