The first-ever direct commercial passenger flight from Israel to the United Arab Emirates took off on Monday.⁠
A chartered El Al airliner carrying Israeli and American diplomats landed in the United Arab Emirates at 3:38 p.m. local time on Monday, completing a symbolic first direct flight from Tel Aviv to Abu Dhabi that officials said would pave the way for formal diplomatic and commercial ties and might inspire other Arab nations to follow suit in normalizing relations with the Jewish state.
The Israeli and American delegations, led by Jared Kushner for the Trump administration and Israel’s national security adviser, Meir Ben-Shabbat, arrived in Abu Dhabi for a day and a half of what were billed as “professional” meetings with Emirati counterparts on matters including health, commerce and security.
But the substance of those meetings seemed secondary, and not a close second, to the spectacle of the Israeli-marked El Al jet on the tarmac in Abu Dhabi.
The plane flew the flags of all three nations and, with “peace” newly stenciled above the pilot’s side window in English, Hebrew and Arabic, provided the backdrop as a coterie of Israeli diplomats descended onto an Emirati red carpet, with Emirati television broadcasting the pageantry live.
The flight is a step in what is expected to be full normalization between Israel and the UAE.