More than 1,200 aircrew members from nations with no diplomatic ties to Israel have reportedly entered the country over the past year, a disclosure that emerged as Israeli lawmakers examined possible security failures surrounding the attempted hijacking of an Israel-bound Flydubai flight FZ1073.
The Times of Israel reported Tuesday that the information was leaked from a closed-door meeting of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. That meeting was called to address any possible security failures that had led up to the attempted hijacking allegedly perpetrated by the Omani co-pilot.
According to the leaked details, some 1,240 individuals have entered. Additional reporting described foreign airline crew members holding dual citizenship, including Lebanese and Syrian citizenship, arriving in Israel.
“I personally saw air crew — pilots and flight attendants — with Lebanese, Syrian and other passports at the counter. This happened with all airlines, not just with the Emirati [ones],” a former worker from Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport told N12 News Israel. “Even then, we didn’t understand how pilots from hostile countries could fly to Israel.”
The former worker said some crew members tried to enter Israel but were refused when the screening system flagged their second passports from enemy or hostile states.
Under the aviation agreement governing Flydubai’s service to Israel, pilots operating flights into the country must hold passports from countries that maintain diplomatic relations with Israel, according to Israeli officials previously cited by The Daily Wire.
Following the attempted hijacking — which was ultimately stopped by wounded Indian pilot Smit Machchhar and several Israeli passengers — that security rule quickly became one of the focal points of the ensuing investigation.
Because Oman does not have a diplomatic relationship with Israel, Israeli officials questioned how the Omani co-pilot was able to join the crew of a plane destined for a flight bound for Ben Gurion Airport.
Following the narrowly averted disaster, Doron Spielman, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, said that going forward, Israel would seek to know the identity of pilots flying into the country and conduct higher levels of security screening.
“Anywhere that an Israeli is going to be flying into Israel, our job right now is to do our best — even if they’re not on Israeli airlines — to make sure that those security procedures are much higher,” Spielman said.
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