Israel says that a pilot of a plane bound for Tel Aviv has tried to crash it in a "jihadist attack attempt"

BarcelonaA plane flying this Wednesday from Dubai to Tel Aviv has been diverted to Saudi Arabia after the co-pilot attempted to crash the aircraft, according to information from Israel. The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, detailed that the co-pilot, who has been arrested, stabbed the pilot to try to take control of the plane and bring it down, in which "almost all the passengers were Israeli." Defense Minister Israel Katz stated that the incident was "an attempted jihadist terrorist attack."

The aircraft, from the airline FlyDubai, ended up landing at Tabuk airport, a city in the northwest of Saudi Arabia. In the route from Dubai to Tabuk published by the flight tracking page Flightradar24, it can be seen how, before crossing the border with Jordan, the plane, which was following an east-to-west direction, made a sharp turn to the north and lost flight altitude. It went from flying at 34,000 feet to doing so at 16,000 in less than two minutes. From that moment on, the aircraft followed an irregular trajectory until, upon reaching the border with Jordan, it made a U-turn, turned south, and then headed again towards Tabuk.

In a statement, FlyDubai described the events as an "incident," without detailing the cause, and assured that all passengers are safe and sound after the plane landed "safely" in Tabuk at 9:45 AM (local time). The craft issued an emergency signal at 8:44 AM before making a U-turn, and the Israeli army sent military planes towards the aircraft, which ultimately did not take action.

A tragedy averted

Various Israeli media outlets have attempted to reconstruct the events based on the accounts of some passengers, who heard shouting coming from the cockpit. According to their testimony, everything suggests that one of the pilots may have attempted to take control of the plane unilaterally. His colleague in the cockpit and also some passengers allegedly prevented it with a violent struggle, thus avoiding a tragedy.

Benjamin Netanyahu explained that he spoke with one of the Israeli passengers on board, who recounted how the incident unfolded: "He explained to me that the plane made a deadly turn and began to lose altitude. He told me that, somehow, he managed to enter the cockpit with one of the crew members and that, together, they subdued the pilot who had stabbed the other pilot while attempting to sabotage the aircraft's systems".

In a video published by Israeli television Channel 12, three passengers can be seen with traces of blood in front of the plane's cockpit, guarding the two pilots, who are on the ground and covered in blood. "We are protecting the pilot who was attacked," the passengers assert while showing the alleged aggressor. Once on the ground, the plane's captain and the co-pilot were taken to a hospital to receive medical attention for the wounds caused during the fight, according to a statement from Tabuk airport.

One month before the elections

Hours after the incident, the most radical ministers in Netanyahu's government have called for reprisals against the pilot identified as responsible for the events. Bezalel Smotrich, head of Finance, has stated that he has requested that the pilot be punished just as it would have been done if the tragedy had been completed: "Whoever tried to crash the plane and murder 180 Israelis must pay as if they had done so," he wrote on X, where he extended the punishment to "any country or terrorist organization that sent him."

The incident comes with just under a month to go before Israelis head to the polls. Netanyahu is facing multiple controversies and criticisms, among which are the public's exhaustion regarding all the open military fronts and the indignation generated by reports suggesting that Saudi Arabia had warned Netanyahu himself about the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, ten days before they took place. Warnings that the Israeli prime minister had allegedly ignored.

Voices calling for Netanyahu to rethink the country's military strategy are becoming increasingly important. But far from that, the offensives continue, with attacks and bombings in Gaza, increasingly serious settler attacks in the West Bank, and the maintenance of the occupation in southern Lebanon. In this regard, after this Wednesday's air incident, Israel's Minister of National Security, Ben Gvir, requested in a post on X to "take to the next level" Israel's "security doctrine" until achieving "total victory" in Iran, Lebanon, Gaza, and the West Bank. In the same message, Gvir thanks God and the "heroic passengers" for their actions during the flight, and asserts that terrorism is "a demon with whom one should never reach any agreement, except for its defeat and erasure from the face of the earth."