(Communicated by the Prime Minister's Media Adviser)

 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, today (Thursday, 26 November 2020), at Ben-Gurion International Airport, at the welcoming ceremony for the first Flydubai commercial flight from Dubai:

 

"This is the first commercial flight from Dubai to Israel. It is a historic flight because it now opens the way for dozens of flights a week to Dubai, to the UAE, to Bahrain and to the east; a visa exemption joins this. This means that there is a great opening here for trade, the economy and tourism that, in effect, makes for a truly new and different Middle East, a meeting between peoples as well as meeting between leaders. We are crumbling the Israeli-Arab conflict and turning it into Israeli-Arab cooperation in order to produce not only a new future but also a new present, and we are doing so with dizzying speed. I think that the entire world is watching and understands that we are making history here, and we can all welcome this."

 

In response to a journalist's question, Prime Minister Netanyahu said:

 

"We are already flying over Saudi Arabia, as you know, because all of these flights are over Saudi Arabia. This includes flights by Israeli airlines, and I think that this is a welcome change. I anticipate that the circle of normalization will continue to expand and I say this with great confidence. Nothing is assured 100% but it seems to me that if I need to look forward, I estimate that in the coming months we will see more countries joining this circle, one way or another, on this or that level. This cannot be stopped. We are not going back. What we are doing here today is historic: The first commercial flight from Dubai to Israel – and not the last. We are going to open dozens of flights in both directions. This is simply not only changing the future of the Middle East and Israel, it is also changing the present."