In an election year, the Zionist regime led by the ruling party in Israel is in the habit of fishing in troubled waters, and the FlyDubai incident has provided Netanyahu with such an opportunity. The asymmetry of violence unleashed by Israel in Gaza has shifted global public opinion against it. The horrors of October 7, 2023, committed by Hamas have been considerably eclipsed by the huge scale of killing in Gaza, where the death toll represents over 3% of the population. The world at large is anxiously watching this genocide by Israel and the radicalising effects of witnessing direct human suffering. The official ceasefire has had little effect. Nearly 1,400 Palestinians have been killed over the last year, and over 74,000 in Gaza since October 2023. To add to this, many more unaccounted-for people have died indirectly from hunger, disease, building collapses, or inability to access medical care owing to the systemic destruction of Gaza’s health system and repeated blocking of humanitarian aid, food, and medicines.
UN independent commissions of inquiry involving Justice Muralidharan and Volker have found that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute crimes prohibited under the Genocide Convention. Yet, unfortunately, US imperialism under Trump seems to spend more energy debating the word “genocide” than identifying how to save the Palestinian people, their hearths and homes, and their culture. Israel under Netanyahu has become unpopular with younger generations, who see their country in the context of extreme violence. Israel’s close alliance with the US, along with its appeal as an economic partner and arms producer, has led many states to prioritise their trade and security interests rather than implement the sanctions and accountability measures expected in response to war crimes and other abuses. Its relations with partners such as the UK, France, and Germany have become more difficult. Many Israelis feel isolated under Netanyahu, and a handful of courageous Israeli reporters and activists are exposing the hollowness of the security measures and war crimes of the current government.
In this context, the FlyDubai incident is seen by opposition parties in Israel as a failure of the Netanyahu government. It is Israeli government policy that Israel-bound flights are vetted before landing in Israel. Why, then, was the Omani pilot in the FlyDubai aircraft allowed to fly? Second, how was a pilot from a country with no diplomatic relations with Israel cleared to operate a flight bound for Tel Aviv on September 30? Miri Regev, the Transport Minister in Netanyahu’s cabinet, argues that responsibility for the failure of security oversight for flights operated by foreign airlines falls not under her supervision but under the remit of Mossad and Shin Bet, Israel’s foreign and domestic intelligence agencies. In a parliamentary democracy, responsibility is always collective. Moreover, in a 2014 report, the State Comptroller categorically stated that there is no division of responsibility for the security of foreign airlines operating in Israel and recommended that the government address the issue.
In 2023, the Pew Research Centre tested the mood of Americans by asking them to describe the country’s politics in one word. The most common choices were “bad,” “corrupt,” “divisive,” “chaos,” “messy,” and “polarized.” In survey after survey, Americans report levels of polarization unparalleled in recent history. Liberal democracy there has not lived up to its promise. Had a survey been conducted in Israel at that time, the result would perhaps have been almost similar.
The Omani co-pilot in the FlyDubai aircraft, Hamas al-Hammami, is said to have admitted that he had planned to crash the September 30 flight into Ben-Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv. He had also operated a flight to Tel Aviv earlier that year and intended to hijack and crash the plane then but opted not to. Here, the question arises: what kind of vetting was being done by Israeli authorities?
Yair Lapid, the opposition leader, dismissing Netanyahu’s security review as a “sham investigation,” has stated on X that “the chain of failures that preceded the incident could have led to a disaster of historic proportions, and this is how an Israeli Prime Minister responds?” He further added, “Just as Netanyahu escaped an investigation into the October 7 massacre, he is now running away again.” What happened to the vetting of crews of all flights landing in the country? What prevented them from checking the antecedents of that rogue pilot who is said to have been debarred by Oman from flight training because of his “radical views”? Netanyahu is said to have said that his country does not allow pilots from nations with which Israel does not share diplomatic ties—Oman being a case in point—to operate flights to Israel. How, then, was the accused given duty on a flight to Tel Aviv?
Instead of looking into his grave mishandling of the case, he points the finger of suspicion at Iran and thereby retains his so-called “Mr. Security” image. “Insider threat” in flights is not new. The February 1982 Japan Airlines incident and the October 2023 Alaska/Horizon flight, where off-duty pilot Joseph Emerson tried to shut down both engines from the jump seat, are cases in point. In this case, there seems to be a serious flaw in the vetting procedure used by the Israeli authorities under Netanyahu’s rule.
Taking shelter behind the failed crash attempt in the FlyDubai incident is unlikely to yield much electoral dividend for Netanyahu. Israel’s “New Strategic Loneliness,” to use Jane Kinninmont’s phrase, stares Netanyahu in the face. Military superiority will take him nowhere. Preoccupied with self-preservation in the face of unpardonable security lapses and corruption allegations, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sees a much more difficult road ahead of October 27. The Israeli Supreme Court’s lifting of the ban on Arab parties’ participation in the upcoming election is a matter of concern for the ruling coalition. Jane Kinninmont is hopeful about the prospects of pragmatic figures such as Eisenkot and Golan, rather than the highly ideological Ben-Gvir and Smotrich or Netanyahu, in the election.
Winning elections is not the measure of a statesman. The measure is how far he has worked for peace in these troubled times. Crises like the FlyDubai incident are inherent features of toxic capitalism and imperialism that destabilise life and society. It is time to reflect and imagine alternatives that would empower both people and planet Earth. Zionist regime under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is playing his old dirty trick at the cost of people and democracy in Israel. The defeat of Zionist regime is the first step towards restoring peace in the region and rehabilitation of people of Gaza.
