El Al Flight 971 departed this morning from Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport and landed three hours later in Abu Dhabi. This first commercial flight from Israel to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) was permitted to cross Saudi airspace, which had previsously been blocked to Israeli air traffic.
The historic flight carried an Israeli and an American delegation, set to discuss with their UAE counterparts details of the normalization agreement announced Aug. 13. The two delegations were welcomed by UAE officials. The Israeli delegation is headed by chief of the National Security Council Meir Ben-Shabbat; the American delegation is headed by US national security adviser Robert O’Brien and senior US presidential adviser Jared Kushner.