More than 24 hours after an Omani pilot stabbed another in the middle of a flight to Tel Aviv, the motive that guided the attacker is the main of several unknowns this Thursday. The Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, has assured in recent hours that the pilot went through a process of “radical Islamist indoctrination” and has suggested, without presenting evidence, a possible role for Iran. The pilot – whose name remains unknown – was flying over Jordanian territory with about 170 Israeli passengers on board when he began to descend abruptly and stabbed his companion in the cockpit. A reserve pilot corrected the trajectory and made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia.
The head of Government – whose re-election is at stake on the 27th – indicated that his intelligence services will “possibly” participate in the investigations in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The investigation seeks to determine “to what extent” the incident “is related to any terrorist activity” and was premeditated, according to its state news agency WAM. In the conversation they had on Wednesday, the Emirati president, Mohamed bin Zayed al Nahyan, “agreed for Israel to join in the interrogation” of the pilot, Netanyahu added.
"We will get to the bottom of the matter about this attacker: if he had accomplices, if Iran was behind it. I think we will know very soon," declared the prime minister, in one of the interviews he is granting, only to American media.
An official Israeli source has fueled the jihadist trail, speaking anonymously to the national media. He assures that the Omani pilot “was willing to commit suicide” and that he spoke on social networks about “killing Jews.” “His accounts clearly indicate that he had been radicalized in jihadist ideology [...] We cannot say this with certainty until the investigation is concluded, but it certainly seems that he was a suicide bomber who was probably going to try to shoot down the plane,” he points out.
The president of the United States, Donald Trump, had a long conversation with Netanyahu on Wednesday, according to his own account, after which he was less blunt than his interlocutor about the nature of the incident. Trump noted that the pilot “maybe was a terrorist or maybe a crazy person” and that the Israelis “say he wanted to crash the plane, but they don't have that kind of information.”
The initial impression of the Israeli authorities is that the pilot acted on his own initiative, without orders from any organization or State, according to television channel 12. He had barely been working for eight months for the Emirati airline Flydubai, responsible for the flight on which the incident took place, according to Israeli media, amid silence from the Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Oman.
At the moment, Israel's Minister of National Security, the ultra Itamar Ben Gvir, has requested his extradition. “Anyone who planned to crash a plane and murder 180 Israelis must be extradited to Israel and pay the highest price here,” said Ben Gvir, responsible for expanding the scope of the death penalty.
The Emirati judicial authorities have jurisdiction over the incident because the plane—of the state airline FlyDubai—is registered in the country and operates under its flag, “even if [the alleged crimes] occur outside the national territory,” as is the case, according to the statement announcing it. The Emirati attorney general, Hamad Saif al Shamsi, has ordered the collection of evidence about what happened between the two pilots.
The plane first issued a “general emergency” alert and then another less common alert that includes hijacking cases. Once the aggressor was neutralized, the device turned around and landed at the Tabuk airport, in northwest Saudi Arabia.
The two pilots were initially hospitalized there. Smit Machchhar – the stabbed Indian captain whom his Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, and Netanyahu have described as a “hero” for opening the cabin door with his last strength – has been transferred from Saudi Arabia to the United Arab Emirates, as stated by the Indian ambassador to the UAE, Deepak Mittal. The diplomat assured that “he is recovering favorably.” Machchhar lives in Dubai and has 13 years of professional experience.
Questions
The passing of the hours has fueled two other questions. The first is how an Omani piloted the plane if the bilateral air transport agreement with the United Arab Emirates excludes citizens of countries that lack diplomatic relations with Israel, as is the case. “Obviously, he managed to overcome that obstacle,” Netanyahu told the American network Fox. Israeli television Channel 12 has pointed out that, in fact, dozens of pilots with Omani nationality have flown the Dubai-Tel Aviv route – tremendously popular among Israelis – in recent years.
The other question, of a more internal nature, is the relationship of the incident with Netanyahu's strange announcement the day before - theatrically launched from an air base - of "indications" that Israel's "enemies" would try to attack the country before the elections on the 27th, which appear to be highly disputed.
In one of the interviews, the prime minister insisted that he lacked warnings or specific intelligence information that would have allowed the event to be prevented. And his predecessor in office, Yair Lapid, has come out to clarify that Netanyahu did not mention any threat of a plane hijacking in the briefing that – using his status as opposition leader – he managed to force to receive information about these abstract security threats.
"It is prohibited to say what is said in a security meeting and I am very strict with that, but you can say what was not said: no plane hijacking scenario was mentioned. Absolutely nothing," he wrote this Thursday. Lapid has come out against the possibility that the temporal proximity to the plane incident changes the perception of the previous warning: from an electoral ploy - as many saw it then - to a well-founded warning.
Suspension
The proximity of the tragedy does not seem to have altered travel plans to Tel Aviv. Routes to the city—whether with Israeli or international airlines—have hardly registered any cancellations in the last few hours.
Flydubai announced on Wednesday night the suspension of its flights to Israel “while the investigation continues.” And, this Thursday, the Emirates airline (also owned by the Emirati State) announced the sine die suspension of all codeshare flights with Flydubai with Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport as origin or destination.
As flights to Israel with Emirates always require a stopover in Dubai and a transfer to a Flydubai plane, the result in practice is that anyone who has a reservation will also not be able to board the Emirates plane for the first leg of the trip. “Passengers with final destination Tel Aviv will not be able to board at the point of origin,” the airline has stated.
To bring back the thousands of Israelis affected by these measures, the national airlines El Al, Arkia and Israir will begin operating repatriation flights this Friday.
