The agreement was hammered out just hours before Israel’s first commercial flight to the UAE was planned on Tuesday
news agency
WASHINGTON/RIYADH
Saudi Arabia has agreed to let Israel airliners cross its airspace en route to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) after talks between Saudi officials and White House adviser Jared Kushner, a senior Trump administration official said late on Monday.
Kushner and Middle East envoys Avi Berkowitz and Brian Hook raised the issue shortly after they arrived in Saudi Arabia for talks. “We were able to reconcile the issue,” the official told Reuters.
The agreement was hammered out just hours before Israel’s first commercial flight to the UAE was planned on Tuesday morning. The Israir Airline flight was at risk of being cancelled with no overflight agreement.
The direct flights are an offshoot of normalisation deals Israel reached this year with the UAE, Bahrain and Sudan.
The Emirates has already reaped benefits from normalisation, including the White House pushing forward with arms sales, including top-of-the-line F-35 fighter jets, to the Gulf country, significantly changing the military balance in the Gulf and affect Israel’s military edge.
“This should resolve any issues that should occur with Israeli carriers taking people from Israel to the UAE and back and to Bahrain,” the official said.
Kushner and his team were to meet Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman later this week, as well as the leader of Kuwait. One goal of the trip is to try to persuade the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries to end a three-year blockade of Qatar.
The peninsular Gulf state has been under an air, land and sea blockade by GCC members Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain, and non-GCC member Egypt, since June 2017. They cut ties with Doha after claiming it supported “terrorism”.
