Attack against the jewel in the crown of normalization

An attempted attack on a Flydubai flight, the busiest route from Israel to the UAE, is seen as a strike against the symbol of normalization. Ben-Dror Yemini's column describes the warm relations with the UAE, in contrast to other Arab countries, and the attempt to turn the route into an aviation disaster. The attack was thwarted thanks to the resourcefulness of Israelis on the flight.

The attempted attack on a Flydubai flight, the busiest route to and from Israel with ten daily flights, is seen as a direct hit on the jewel in the crown of normalization. Ben-Dror Yemini's column describes the warm relations with the UAE, which have continued and even strengthened since October 7 and the confrontation with Iran. The attack, he says, was meant to turn these relations into one of the worst disasters in aviation history. It was thwarted thanks to the resourcefulness of Israelis on the flight who understood what was happening in the cockpit. Yemini quotes Yigal Carmon from MEMRI, who estimates that Iran threatened that if its planes could not fly, other planes would not fly either, and this is the realization of that threat. The event, according to Carmon, is on the scale of a casus belli, but the US does not want to renew the confrontation with Iran at this stage. The column highlights the UAE as an alternative of mutual respect between Jews and Muslims, noting that expressions of hostility there are negligible compared to Western countries.