Israel’s El Al at Abu Dhabi airport within the first-ever business flight from Israel to the UAE.
Riyadh:
Saudi Arabia has agreed to permit UAE flights to “all international locations” to overfly the dominion, state media reported Wednesday, days after permitting an Israeli plane to move over en path to Abu Dhabi.
Saudi Arabia has accepted an Emirati request to permit “crossing the dominion’s airspace for flights heading to the UAE and departing from it to all international locations”, the official Saudi Press Company mentioned, citing a supply from the civil aviation authority.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the meantime introduced that Monday’s historic first business flight of an Israeli plane direct to the United Arab Emirates throughout Saudi Arabia wouldn’t be the final.
“Israeli planes and people from all international locations will have the ability to fly immediately from Israel to Abu Dhabi and Dubai, and again,” Netanyahu mentioned, with out giving any timeline.
The bulletins come after a US-Israeli delegation visited Abu Dhabi on Monday, on the primary direct business flight from Tel Aviv to mark the normalisation of ties between the Jewish state and the UAE.
Saudi Arabia has mentioned it is not going to observe the United Arab Emirates in establishing diplomatic ties with Israel till the Jewish state has signed an internationally recognised peace accord with the Palestinians.
However the kingdom has cultivated clandestine relations with Israel lately, in a shift spearheaded by de facto chief Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
In an indication of its cooperation with Israel, Saudi Arabia allowed Monday’s historic flight to cross its airspace, halving what would in any other case have been a protracted detour across the Arabian peninsula.
Nonetheless, Saudi Arabia, the Arab world’s largest financial system and residential to Islam’s holiest websites, faces extra delicate political calculations than the UAE.
Not solely would a proper recognition of Israel be seen by Palestinians and their supporters as a betrayal of their trigger, it will additionally harm the dominion’s picture because the chief of the Islamic world.
In 2002, Saudi Arabia sponsored the Arab Peace Initiative which referred to as for Israel’s full withdrawal from the Palestinian territories occupied within the Six-Day Conflict of 1967 and an equitable resolution for Palestinian refugees, in trade for peace and the total normalisation of relations.
However a shared animosity in the direction of Iran, together with Saudi makes an attempt to draw overseas funding to fund Prince Mohammed’s formidable Imaginative and prescient 2030 financial diversification plan, seem like pushing the dominion nearer to Israel than ever.
(Aside from the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV employees and is revealed from a syndicated feed.)
Source link
