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 has been diverted to Saudi Arabia after the co-pilot attempted to crash the aircraft, according to reports from Israel. 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. According to Netanyahu, "almost all the passengers were Israeli." There were 174 people on board. 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 headed towards Tabuk once again. 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 tried to reconstruct the events based on the account of some passengers, who heard screams coming from the cockpit. According to their testimony, everything suggests that one of the pilots had tried to take control of the plane unilaterally. His cockpit colleague 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 Canal 12, three passengers can be seen with bloodstains in front of the cockpit, guarding the two pilots, who are on the ground and bloodied. "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 injuries sustained during the fight, according to a statement from Tabuk airport.

The captain, Smit Machchhar, managed to open the cockpit door despite being wounded, which allowed several passengers to enter and subdue the co-pilot. Among the passengers there were also off-duty Flydubai pilots, who subsequently helped land the plane in Tabuk.

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, the Finance Minister, has demanded that the pilot be punished just as he would have been had the tragedy been completed: "Whoever tried to crash the plane and murder 174 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 less than a month before Israelis head to the polls. Legislative elections are scheduled for October 27. Netanyahu faces 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 occurred. Warnings that the Israeli prime minister allegedly ignored.

Voices calling on 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 aerial 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 which one should never reach any agreement, except for its defeat and erasure from the face of the earth.