Saudi Arabia has agreed to let Israeli airliners cross its airspace en route to the United Arab Emirates. This happened after talks between Saudi officials and White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, a senior Trump administration official said.
Kushner, Middle East envoys Avi Berkowitz and Brian Hook raised the issue after they arrived in Saudi Arabia for talks. “We were able to reconcile the issue,” the official told Reuters.
The agreement came hours before Israel’s first commercial flight to the UAE on Tuesday morning. The Israir flight was at risk of being canceled with no overflight agreement.
The direct flights are an offshoot of normalization deals between Israel and UAE, Bahrain, and Sudan.
“This should resolve any issues that should occur with Israeli carriers taking people from Israel to the UAE and back and to Bahrain,” the official said.
Kushner and his team were to meet Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman later this week. They will also meet the emir of Kuwait.
One goal of the trip is to try to persuade Gulf Cooperation Council countries to end a three-year blockade of Qatar.
Is Saudi Arabia planning a normalization deal with Israel too? Well, we think time will let. However, there are rumors that Saudi Arabia is also pressing Pakistan to recognize Israel.
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