ABU DHABI: Top aides to US. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in the UAE on a historic flight from Tel Aviv on Monday.
They would finalise a pact marking open relations between the UAE power and Israel. Even before discussions start in Abu Dhabi, the delegates made aviation history by taking an Israeli commercial airliner directly from Tel Aviv to the UAE capital over Saudi territory. Flight LY971 flew over Saudi Arabia after Riyadh agreed to the Israeli request on Sunday.
The joint delegation was welcomed on the tarmac by UAE Minister of Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash. “While this peace was forged by its leaders, it is overwhelmingly desired by its people,” Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner claimed upon landing in Abu Dhabi.
“That’s what peace for peace looks like,” Netanyahu tweeted, describing a deal for formal ties with an Arab state that does not entail handover of land that Israel captured in a 1967 war.
Announced on 13 August, the normalisation deal is the first such accommodation between an Arab country and Israel in more than 20 years.
With the word “peace” printed in Arabic, English and Hebrew above a cockpit window, the El Al Boeing 737 took off for Abu Dhabi from Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion international airport, a flight of about three hours and 20 minutes, the pilot announced to passengers.
Kushner, and National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien head the US delegation. The Israeli side is led by O’Brien’s counterpart, Meir Ben-Shabbat. Officials will explore bilateral cooperation in areas such as commerce and tourism, and Israeli defence envoys are due to visit the UAE separately.
“I prayed yesterday at the (Western) Wall that Muslims and Arabs throughout the world will be watching this flight, recognising that we are all children of God, and that the future does not have to be pre-determined by the past,” Kushner told reporters on the tarmac at Ben-Gurion airport.