New Delhi:
With Israel weeks away from general elections, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing a pressure from Opposition leaders to fire his transport minister after an Omani co-pilot tried to crash a Tel Aviv-bound plane from Dubai.
The demand for Transport Minister Miri Regev’s resignation came amid reports that top Israeli bodies had warned for years that her ministry was not properly carrying out its security checks on foreign flights, including oversight of their pilots.
The opposition leaders questioned how a pilot from a country with no diplomatic relations with Israel was cleared to operate a flight bound for Tel Aviv.
Report Flags Lapses
The Times of Israel, citing internal documents seen by the Army Radio, has reported that concerns over the division of responsibility for screening foreign airlines had been raised for years.
In 2021, the security cabinet removed responsibility from the Shin Bet — Israel’s domestic intelligence agency — and said that the Transportation Ministry’s Civil Aviation Authority would “check that the security instructions in the foreign countries that are not classified as highest risk meet the regulations of international treaties”, the report said.
A classified 2024 state comptroller report found that the ministry was not meeting its obligations, Army Radio reported, citing the document.
In May 2024, the security cabinet ordered the National Security Council to establish a team within 90 days composed of representatives of the Transportation Ministry, the Civil Aviation Authority, Shin Bet, Mossad — the Israel’s foreign intelligence agency — and Finance Ministry to “examine the security framework for international commercial flights into Israel, and to put together recommendations for changes”.
READ | “We Don’t Do Background Checks”: Israeli Ministry Amid flydubai Probe
The discussions then went on for a year and the Shin Bet stressed that it did not have the manpower or budget to handle security checks for foreign flights.
The NSC then said that “it is appropriate for the Transportation Ministry to fulfill its responsibility over foreign flights”.
“In order for the Civil Aviation Authority to be able to take responsibility for the matter, it will require appropriate manpower and budget,” it added.
Despite Transportation Ministry’s security chief, Avri Cohen, saying the ministry could not take on such a large security challenge, Miri Regev agreed to the responsibility being transferred to her ministry, according to Army Radio.
In 2025, Netanyahu directed that security responsibility for foreign flights would be fully transferred to the Transportation Ministry, the report said.
The Transportation Ministry called the claims “completely false”.
It said the ministry’s responsibility for foreign flights had been in place for decades, and that “presenting it as a new task transferred to the ministry in recent years is incorrect”.
Miri Regev Says Her Department Not Responsible
Miri Regev said her ministry is not responsible for any security breaches prior to the attack as it does not have the capacity to perform background checks on foreign pilots.
“Those who are supposed to identify the crew are security officials. We are not security officials,” she told Israel’s public broadcaster Kan on Saturday.
“Those who are supposed to say what the threat level is, and whether you can travel to a given destination, are security officials,” she added.
Miri Regev is a close aide of Benjamin Netanyahu
Keren Terner, who previously served as director-general of the transport ministry and is now running for parliament for the opposition, blamed Regev for the security failure, noting that the Civil Aviation Authority was under the “direct subordination” of her ministry.
“You are responsible for the security of foreign companies. Not the Shin Bet, not Mossad. You. That’s what the government decided, and that’s what the law stipulates,” she wrote on X.
Gadi Eisenkot, a leading challenger to Netanyahu for the October 27 election, said that “in a proper and functioning government, the minister of transportation would have submitted a letter of resignation last night”.
“In a proper country, the Prime Minister would have fired her and ordered an investigative committee to probe the failure,” he wrote on X.
Israeli Security Lapses?
Dozens of Omani pilots have reportedly flown to Tel Aviv in recent years on flydubai flights, despite Israel’s ban on pilots from unfriendly states.
A report in Israeli media outlet, Channel 12, claimed that Israeli security agency Shin Bet was negligent in enforcing a ban on pilots from states that doesn’t have diplomatic relations with Israel.
READ | flydubai Co-Pilot Planned To Crash Plane Into Israel Airport In 9/11 Repeat
Oman, which has not signed the Abraham Accords — a pact to normalise ties between Israel and Arab countries — does not have formal diplomatic relations with Israel. The accords, which established diplomatic ties between Israel and the UAE in 2020, bar pilots from flying into Israel if their home countries don’t formally recognise the Jewish state.
According to the report, Israel has ceded oversight of that prohibition over the years, trusting the foreign airlines to enforce the ban. Citing the investigation into the attack, Channel 12 reported that the Shin Bet never examined the origins of flydubai’s pilots, beyond reminding the airline about the clause.
The flydubai Flight Incident
The co-pilot of a flydubai’s Dubai-Tel Aviv flight, identified as 29-year-old Hamam al-Hammami from Oman, stabbed the pilot, Captain Smit Machchhar, with an axe last Wednesday, with the United Arab Emirates, which is leading the investigation, calling it a “terrorist attack”.
Captain Machchhar said he somehow managed to open the cockpit door, following which passengers overpowered the co-pilot as the Boeing 737 plunged nearly 14,000 feet in less than 30 seconds.
A second pair of flydubai pilots aboard the flight — which was carrying over 170 passengers and crew — then landed the jet safely in Saudi Arabia’s Tabuk.
