He wished to express his gratitude. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked the Saudi authorities on Tuesday (August 29th) for their "warm attitude" towards Israeli passengers after the forced landing, the day before, in Jeddah, of a plane connecting Seychelles to Tel Aviv.
Due to technical difficulties, Air Seychelles flight HM22 had to land at the Saudi city's airport. Israel's Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that a special plane scheduled to land in Tel Aviv in the afternoon had been chartered to pick them up and allow them to complete their journey.
According to Israeli media, there were 128 Israeli passengers on board the Air Seychelles flight and they were met and cared for overnight in Jeddah, western Saudi Arabia.
"Good neighborliness"
Israel and Saudi Arabia do not maintain diplomatic relations, although contacts have multiplied since 2020 with the normalization of Israel's relations with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan under the so-called Abraham Accords.
These contacts, under the aegis of the United States, tend to make Saudi Arabia, custodian of the Muslim holy sites of Mecca and Medina, the next Arab nation to normalize relations with Israel.
"I very much appreciate the warm attitude of the Saudi authorities towards Israeli travelers (...) I very much appreciate this good neighborliness," Netanyahu said in a brief video released by his office.
אני מאוד מעריך את היחס החם של הרשויות הסעודיות לנוסעים הישראלים שהמטוס שלהם נקלע למצוקה ונאלץ לנחות נחיתת חירום בג'דה.
אני שמח שכולם חוזרים הביתה.
אני מאוד מעריך את השכנות הטובה. pic.twitter.com/XyVj0o9B1g
— Benjamin Netanyahu - בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) August 29, 2023
Saudi airspace had been closed to flights to and from Israel until July 2022, when it was reopened to coincide with a visit by US President Joe Biden to the region.
Diplomatic fiasco
But many commentators on Tuesday believed that Benjamin Netanyahu's stated goal of normalization with Riyadh could be seriously undermined by the diplomatic fiasco sparked by the official Israeli announcement of an "unprecedented" secret meeting between Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen and his Libyan counterpart, Najla al-Mangoush.
This announcement provoked the dismissal of the head of Libyan diplomacy and protest movements in Tripoli and several cities in Libya, a country that does not recognize Israel.
Israel's Foreign Ministry on Monday denied without further explanation that it was behind a "leak" about the meeting, but U.S. officials fear the whole affair could deter other Arab countries "from engaging in normalization efforts" with Israel, according to Barak Ravid, a diplomatic analyst with the Israeli news site Walla.
With AFP
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