Page 13 - TORCH Magazine #17 - Autumn 2020

Changing skies
“We are crumbling the Israeli-Arab conflict and turning it into Israeli-Arab cooperation in order to produce not only a new future but also a new present, and we are doing so with dizzying speed. I think that the entire world is watching and understands that we are making history here,” he added.
In November, budget airline FlyDubai began direct flights from the UAE to Israel twice daily, the first scheduled commercial service between the two cities. Abu Dhabi’s Eithad will begin direct flights to Israel in 2021.
Then on 1st December, the first
Israeli flight to the UAE took off from Ben-Gurion Airport to Dubai after Saudi Arabia granted permission for Israeli commercial aircraft to use its airspace – an unprecedented decision that followed talks between Saudi officials and White House senior adviser Jared Kushner.
This follows the creation of a mutual visa exemption deal between Israel and the UAE. Israeli media has reported that Dubai has even overtaken New York as the top vacation destination for Israeli travellers.
At the arrival of the first Emirati
flight to land in Tel Aviv, Prime Minister Netanyahu lauded, “There is a great opening here for trade, the economy and tourism that, in effect, makes for a truly new and different Middle East, a meeting between peoples as well as meeting between leaders.”
"It is exciting and surprising, we did not think it would happen so fast," Captain Hagai Canaan said from the cockpit.
Captain of the El Al's airliner on the first commercial airline to arrive from UAE to Israel.
"We did not think we would be flying over Jordan and Saudi Arabia to reach the Emirates. Outstanding. Flight time will be three hours and 23 minutes."
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