Only Netanyahu gains from the FlyDubai hijacking attempt

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The motives for an alleged hijacker to try and plunge a plane bound for Israel are vivid - and they are opaque.

But whether the attempt on Flight FZ1073 was in revenge for the thousands killed by Israel’s forces in Gaza or the consequences of a psychotic break, only one person benefits. Benjamin Netanyahu.

Israel’s longest serving prime Minister had just taken a similar flight path from the UAE to Israel as the ill-fated FlyDubai passengers.

He had been in Abu Dhabi, Israeli media has reported, because he was trying to get the president of the Emirates, Mohammed bin Zalman, to say publicly that he had not warned Netanyahu about the October 7 2023 Hamas-led massacres.

He needed to do this because Netanyahu, who leads the Likud but heads a far-right Israeli governing coalition, has always presented himself as the machoman who can keep Israel safe.

He faces general elections on October 27.

Shortly before the FlyDubai incident he posted a video in which he warned that, as elections, “our enemies will try to attack us”.

From an Israeli air base he said he was delivering a message to Israel’s enemies - “don’t mess with us”.

“Not now, not ever. Our long arm will reach you anywhere and any place”.

Israel has proved, with ruthless brutality, that this is largely true. The Jewish State has been part of America's attempts to decapitate Iran’s leadership. It has been part of plots that have killed Iranian nuclear scientists.

In Lebanon, a crude land invasion and massive bombardment of the south and the capital was preceded by extraordinary covert operations to target Hezbollah leadership with small bombs planted in thousands of pagers and then hand held radios.

And in Gaza, Israel used a short arm and a very big fist to respond to the killings of October 7 with a massive campaign of destruction causing more than 70,000 deaths. Israel has taken a chunk of Syria not far from the capital, Damascus, too.

None of this has helped Israel improve its standing in the Middle East where the Abraham Accords, which established cordial relations with the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco, are not going to be extended to include Saudi Arabia, as Netanyahu had hoped.

The motivations for the Hamas atrocities of October 7 are likely to have included a desire to provoke such an unequal response from Israel that talks Riyadh would be deep frozen. That desire has been met.

Saudi has ruled out any normalization with Israel until its returns to serious talks about the establishment of a Palestinian state.

In the wider world Israel has lost friends. The United Kingdom has led a group of nations to impose sanctions on Israeli businesses working on the occupied West Bank.

Attempts to make criticism of Israel an act of antisemitism, sometimes in law, have failed. Similar efforts to make it illegal in many western countries to use the threat or application of “Boycoots, Disinvestment and Sanctions” have also failed to embed the idea that BDS is antisemitism.

Netanyahu’s attempts to align the interests of all Jews with his idea of what Israel needs, or wants, have unwound badly as his country stands accused at the UN of alleged genocide, or acts of genocide, in Gaza, has adopted legislation that imposes the death penalty on a racial basis only (against ethnic Paslestinians) and is currently violently forcing non-Jews from their homes and land on the West Bank.

Netanyahu’s Israel is isolated. Many of its traditional friends have been revolted by its actions under its far-right government and even Donald Trump has shown irritation with its pugnacious PM.

Netanyahu also happens to be mid-trial on a range of corruption charges. He has provoked widespread domestic anger over attempts to change the constitution to end judicial independence, and he knows that life outside the office he has held for longer than any other Israeli leader, could lead to ignominy and even jail.

According to Haaretz, Israel’s progressive paper, aggregating polls suggest that a bloc supporting Netanyahu would get 52 seats in the 120 seat Knesset.

That is matched by a bloc led by Gadi Eisenkot, former head of the Israeli Defence Forces, also with 52 seats. The remaining 16 will have a casting vote but Eisenkot has rules out a coalition with Israeli parties dominated by Palestinian citizens of Israel.

Netanyahu’s reelection hangs by a thread.

The FlyDubai hijacking reinforces a Netanyahu narrative that under him his country is more sinned against than sinning - an island of democracy surrounded by violence and madness that only he can protect.