(Newswire.net— October 20, 2020) — The first commercial passenger plane of the United Arab Emirates Company landed at the Israeli Ben Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv, which further strengthened the normalization of relations between these two countries, Al Jazeera reports.
The Etihad Boeing 787 Dreamliner took off for Abu Dhabi with an Israeli passenger and tourist delegation, as it was announced.
Etihad announced that it plans regular flights of passenger planes between the two countries in the future and that it will launch a website in the Hebrew language. The company previously sent an unmarked cargo plane to Tel Aviv, which was intended to help the Palestinians fight the coronavirus.
In August, the plane of the Israeli company El Al with the Star of David on its fuselage flew from Israel to Abu Dhabi, and the American and Israeli delegations were on it. It was the first commercial passenger flight between the two countries.
Israel and the Emirates announced the normalization of relations in August, which encouraged the signing of a whole series of business, banking, and intergovernmental agreements, and that Gulf country also ended the long-lasting boycott of the Jewish state.
The neighboring monarchy of Bahrain signed an agreement on the normalization of relations with Israel in the White House on September 15, when the Emirates also signed a similar document. The UAE and Bahrain are the third and fourth Arab countries to establish relations with Israel.
Egypt signed a peace agreement with the Jewish state in 1979, and Jordan did so in 1994. An Israeli delegation was in Bahrain on Sunday to formalize the agreement.
The so-called Abraham Agreements revealed secret ties between Israel and the Gulf countries that have been established over the years as the common concern for the moves of Iran’s regional rival has grown. Such a normalization of US-mediated relations angered the Palestinians.
They marked the agreements as a betrayal of a long-standing Arab stance that Israel would not be recognized until the Palestinians had an independent state.