Regev passes buck on probing pilots as Israel said ‘racing’ to ID potential threats
As flydubai fallout continues, Transportation Ministry says flights aren't 100% safe and it doesn't do background checks on foreign pilots; Report: Omani attacker had flown to Tel Aviv before but Israel knew nothing about him
Transportation Minister Miri Regev and her office faced escalating scrutiny on Saturday over the recent flydubai terror attack, as reports emerged that pilots from unfriendly or hostile states have repeatedly landed planes in Israel in recent years — including the Omani copilot attacker on Wednesday’s flight.
Regev and her ministry claimed in response that they are not responsible for any security breaches prior to the attack. The ministry said it does not have the capacity to perform background checks on foreign pilots, adding that there’s no way to definitively ensure the security of foreign flights into Israel.
“Those who are supposed to identify the crew are security officials. We are not security officials,” Regev told the Kan public broadcaster on Saturday. “Those who are supposed to say what the threat level is, and whether you can travel to a given destination, are security officials.”
Discourse has begun to shift about the flydubai Flight 1073 attack — in which the plane’s Indian pilot and several Israeli passengers foiled the copilot’s attempt to crash the plane, then two other pilots onboard landed it.
In addition to accounts of the heroism of those who thwarted the attack, attention has turned to how the incident could have been prevented, and what Israel must do to head off similar attacks in the future. The discussion has become especially heated as Israel’s October 27 election approaches, with opponents of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accusing him of neglecting security in air travel.
Israeli regulations reportedly say that pilots from states that lack diplomatic relations with Israel are prohibited from landing in the country. A law stating that lists of flight crews would be sent to Israeli security agencies passed more than three years ago, according to Haaretz.
But Israel’s security establishment has reportedly not acted on those measures. On Saturday, Channel 12 reported that the attacker, copilot Hamam al-Hammami, piloted flydubai planes on the Dubai-Tel Aviv route several times before his attempt to crash Flight 1073. Israeli authorities are checking whether he flew the route days before the terror attack.
The network said flydubai gave Israeli authorities the names of the flight crew, including al-Hammami, as required ahead of Wednesday’s flight, and that the list of names raised no security concerns.
Israel was not aware that al-Hammami had been barred from flying altogether by his previous Oman Air employer because of concerns over his radicalization, the report said.
Israeli investigators have yet to be given access to al-Hammami, who is under investigation in the United Arab Emirates, and are relying on material conveyed by the UAE and Saudi Arabia, the report noted.
‘Racing against time’ to ID pilots from hostile states
But the concern extends beyond al-Hammami, Channel 12 reported. The network said Israel is “racing against time” to determine whether there are pilots from hostile states flying foreign airlines in and out of Ben Gurion Airport and, citing unnamed professional sources, said that in recent years, pilots from Iran, Syria, Iraq and other enemy states have flown foreign airliners to and from the country. The report said those pilots have dual citizenship, with a second passport presumably issued by a non-enemy state.
The report said other unnamed international authorities are helping Israel to tackle the apparent security breach.
Where the flight crews of foreign airlines are concerned, Ben Gurion Airport has been “a lawless zone,” the report charged, citing unnamed security sources.
The report said the Transportation Ministry, which is legally required to oversee foreign airlines’ vetting of pilots flying to Israel, does not do so, and that the Shin Bet security agency and Mossad intelligence agency do not check the backgrounds of foreign pilots either.
‘Nothing is 100%’ regarding air security, Transportation Ministry says
The Transportation Ministry confirmed on Saturday night that it does not perform background checks on pilots who fly into Israel, adding that it can’t promise those flights will be “100 percent” safe.
In the briefing, according to reports in Hebrew media, the Transportation Ministry’s security division denied that it got the names of the flydubai pilots and crew in advance, or that it has the ability to perform background checks on foreign pilots flying into Israel.
“We are not an intelligence body that checks the intelligence background of foreigners,” a representative of the division said in a statement, according to Ynet. “We have no forces abroad. We have no staff that checks every person there.”
The division also said that it could not specify how many pilots from hostile states have landed in Israel, and that it could not promise that flights on foreign airlines will be completely secure.
The division said it outsources background checks to the airlines themselves.
“Nothing is 100% when it comes to security,” the division’s representative said, according to Ynet. Channel 12 quoted the representative as saying that the ministry can’t promise “100% that this won’t happen again,” and that the only foolproof way to stop such threats would be to bar foreign airlines from landing in Israel entirely.
Speaking to Kan, Regev likewise refused to divulge any details regarding her ministry’s investigation into the attack, and declined to confirm that al-Hammami had previously landed in Israel.
She said Israel’s Tax Authority is tasked with reviewing the plane’s manifest and had received the list of passengers and crew. She added that the Shin Bet is responsible for security on Israeli carriers and the Mossad is responsible for security on foreign carriers.
The question of whether the government is culpable for missing warning signs ahead of the attack is playing into the election campaign.
Eisenkot: Attack ‘exposed as a terrible failure’ under Netanyahu
On Saturday, Gadi Eisenkot, leader of the centrist opposition Yashar party, tore into Netanyahu over the attack, linking the near-disaster to the premier’s refusal to impanel a state commission of inquiry into the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led atrocities. Netanyahu has also not explicitly taken responsibility for failures surrounding the attack, which happened while he was in office.
“Those who fear the word ‘responsibility’ and flee from investigating the truth since October 7… are endangering Israel every day with failures and great disasters,” Eisenkot wrote on X. “We got proof of this just this past week, when 180 Israelis were saved thanks to ingenuity and supreme heroism in what is being exposed as a terrible failure under the October 7 government.”
“The grave discoveries about the conduct of the Transportation Ministry and the revelation that pilots from enemy states landed in Israel are further proof that the State of Israel is ‘managed’ by a group of people who aren’t qualified or worthy,” Eisenkot added.
The unnamed sources who spoke to Channel 12 likewise said that “the colossal security screw-up” exposed by Wednesday’s terror attack is “as large as the miracle” by which the pilot and several heroic passengers overcame al-Hammami and saved the 180 people on the plane.
They also compared the incident to the October 7 attack, when “all the facts were out in the open, and nobody looked.” The Omani pilot planned the attack for a long time, they said, “and yet Israel didn’t have a scrap of information on him.”