The first commercial flight from Israel to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) took to the skies on Monday, after an agreement to normalize relations between the two countries following a peace deal.
The flight would have taken seven hours if it had not been allowed to use Saudi airspace, Becker said; instead it took just over three hours. Israel and Saudi Arabia do not share diplomatic relations. President Donald Trump’s top adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, national security adviser Robert O’Brien and the Director of Israel’s National Security Council, Meir Ben-Shabbat all spoke briefly to the media after arriving on the tarmac at Ben-Gurion airport on Monday morning. «This is a historic flight and we hope that this would start a more historic journey for the Middle East and beyond,» Kushner said. «The future should not be determined by the past.» Brian Hook, the outgoing US Special Representative for Iran, and Special Representative for International Negotiations, Avi Berkowitz, are escorting Israeli government experts in aviation, space, health and banking, according to a senior White House official.
