Israel says that a pilot of a plane with destination Tel-Aviv has tried to crash it in a "jihadist attack attempt"

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

The aircraft, from the company 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 turned around, headed south, and then set off again towards Tabuk. By mid-afternoon, the Israeli passengers had arrived at Ben Gurion airport, in Israel.

In a statement, FlyDubai described the events as an "incident" and asked to "refrain from making premature speculations while the authorities gather the facts", as "the underlying reasons and motives" for the events are still unknown. Furthermore, it assured that all passengers are safe and sound after the plane landed "safely" in Tabuk at 9:45 AM (local time). The aircraft issued an emergency signal at 8:44 AM before turning back, and the Israeli army sent military planes towards the aircraft, which ultimately did not take action.

A tragedy avoided

Various Israeli media 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 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 the Israeli television channel Channel 12, three passengers are seen with bloodstains 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 pointing to 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.

A 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, the Finance Minister, has demanded that the pilot be punished just as he would have been 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 just under a month before Israelis go to the polls. Netanyahu is facing multiple controversies and criticisms, among which the population's fatigue regarding all the open military fronts stands out, as well as the outrage generated by information suggesting that Saudi Arabia had warned Netanyahu himself about the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, ten days before they occurred. Warnings that the Israeli prime minister allegedly ignored.

The 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 sense, after this Wednesday's air incident, Israel's National Security Minister, Ben Gvir, called in a post on X to "take Israel's 'security doctrine' to the next level" 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."