Israel, the UAE, Saudi Arabia: the photo of a plane being rescued captures a broader picture of a changing Middle East

The story of the attempted hijacking of the Dubai–Tel Aviv flight, which yesterday morning brought back before our eyes nightmares dating back to a not-so-distant past – a past in which terrorists used hijacked aeroplanes to strike at symbols of freedom – can be viewed from two different perspectives. The first perspective, which is the most important even if it is the most uncertain, concerns the reasons behind the hijacking. Was it merely the attempted suicide of a co-pilot, similar to what we saw in 2015, when the co-pilot of Germanwings flight 9525 deliberately crashed an Airbus A320 into the French Alps with 150 people on board, or had the co-pilot factored in suicide as a means to achieve a different objective, one not incompatible with a terrorist act?

The second angle, which is less obvious but politically more interesting, concerns the powerful symbolism conveyed yesterday to observers by the sequence of events surrounding the rescue of flight FZ1073, carrying 174 passengers, 166 of whom were Israeli, according to Israeli media. The sequence in question is not merely about what happened to the passengers, who were rescued yesterday thanks to the intervention of crew members, the other pilots on board and some Israelis who managed to subdue the co-pilot. The sequence to be observed is that concerning what happened around that aircraft, and it is a sequence that provides us with a snapshot of a new Middle East that often escapes the radar of international politics.

The sequence of events is as we know it: a low-cost airline from the UAE carrying Israelis from an Arab country to Israel, saved first and foremost by what happened on board, but around which a chain of security cooperation was set in motion involving the authorities of an Arab country, the United Arab Emirates, the Israeli security forces and the authorities of another Arab country, considered by Israel to be a safe haven, Saudi Arabia, where the aeroplane – which could have caused a massacre of Israelis – landed. In this sequence, in this snapshot, there is a part of the world that we often stubbornly refuse to see. There is a long-standing practice between Arab countries and Israel that has continued to exist even after Israel’s furious reaction to 7 October, which was demonised by much of international public opinion: the Dubai–Tel Aviv flight exists precisely because, in 2020, the Emirates normalised relations with Israel within the framework of the Abraham Accords, and the airline Flydubai launched the first commercial Dubai–Tel Aviv service on 26 November 2020, immediately following the bilateral air transport agreement between Israel and the Emirates.

The overflight of Saudi airspace also forms part of this same regional shift: a few days after the agreement between the UAE and Israel, it was Saudi Arabia – despite not yet having any bilateral agreements with Israel – that authorised flights from the UAE to Israel, at the request of the Emiratis. Today, that relationship is no longer a one-off: Flydubai continues to operate direct flights between Dubai and Tel Aviv. The breakdown of the normalisation process between Arab countries and Israel – as also revealed by internal Hamas documents made public in 2026 – was one of the driving forces behind the events of 7 October: the Iranian attempt, carried out through Hamas’s acts of terror, to provoke Israel into responding to a pogrom with such violence as to make any alliance with Israel unthinkable for any Arab country. 

Yet the Arab countries keen to strike at the Iranian ‘octopus’ in recent years have never severed ties with Israel. Documents attributed to the Hamas leadership show that Sinwar regarded Saudi normalisation as a strategic threat and, just a few days before 7 October, discussed the need for ‘exceptional action’ to thwart it; the same materials also reveal strong Iranian opposition to that process. This is demonstrated by the survival of the Abraham Accords. It is demonstrated by the uninterrupted flow of trade between the UAE and Israel, which remained essentially stable even in the years following 7 October: in 2025, trade in goods amounted to 3.209 billion dollars, compared with 3.254 billion in 2024. This is demonstrated by the fact that the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Qatar, Bahrain, Egypt and Jordan have continued to work in recent years within what the Americans call the ‘Regional Security Construct’ – a framework for regional military cooperation promoted by CENTCOM, the United States Armed Forces’ unified combatant command – which has air defence against missiles and drones as one of its cornerstones.

This is demonstrated by the fact that when, in April 2024, Iran struck Israel with missiles and drones, the UAE and Saudi Arabia contributed to the defence of the Jewish state through intelligence and radar, whilst Jordan, another Arab country, contributed with direct interception operations (and in May 2026, during the war with Iran, Israel returned the favour by sending Iron Dome batteries and Israeli personnel to the Emirates to operate them, to help Abu Dhabi defend itself against massive Iranian attacks, whilst according to an exclusive report in the Jerusalem Post on 15 September, Saudi Arabia and Israel are reportedly engaged in talks mediated by Centcom itself, to provide Riyadh with intelligence to counter the Houthi terrorists). The motives of the co-pilot in the alleged attempt to crash the aircraft remain unclear, and it is not yet certain whether the moments of terror experienced on the Dubai-Tel Aviv flight were the result of a terrorist act.

We know, however, that the safety net within which the Flydubai aircraft was able to bring its passengers to safety is a net that reflects a balance of power in the Middle East which Hamas terrorists dreamed of destroying, which Iranian-backed terrorists dreamed of sabotaging, which the agents of terror living in Tehran dreamed of bringing down, and which has now instead become a fundamental part of theinfrastructure through which, in a Middle East preparing to come to terms with an America in retreat from the world, attempts will be made in the future to curb the sponsors of terrorism and the exporters of terror. The story of the co-pilot who attempted suicide remains to be fully understood. The story of the new infrastructure capable of governing the Middle East, on the other hand, lies right before our eyes: it is a delicate, fragile but real infrastructure, destined to help a part of the world find ways to save itself from the new champions of global terror, just as it did yesterday for the passengers on flight FZ1073.