Saudi Arabia rejects Israeli bid to fly out passengers from diverted Dubai flight

Saudi Arabia turned down a request from Israel to send its own aircraft into the kingdom to retrieve Israeli passengers stranded after a flydubai flight made an emergency landing there, two security sources said Wednesday.

Israel had asked Saudi Arabia, which has no diplomatic relations with Israel, to allow Israeli military aircraft to land and collect the passengers directly, according to the sources. One of the sources said the Israeli air force had been preparing to dispatch Super Hercules transport planes for the operation before the request was denied. Flydubai said the stranded passengers will instead continue their journey aboard the airline’s own aircraft.

The request followed a dramatic incident aboard a flydubai flight traveling from Dubai to Tel Aviv, in which the co-pilot allegedly stabbed the pilot and attempted to crash the aircraft. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said passengers aboard the flight physically restrained the co-pilot while other pilots took control and landed the plane safely in Saudi Arabia.

The episode adds a new layer of friction to the already delicate question of whether Saudi Arabia will eventually join the Abraham Accords, the US brokered framework under which several Arab states have normalized relations with Israel. President Donald Trump has continued pushing Riyadh to join the agreement, but the kingdom has consistently refused to do so without a clear pathway toward Palestinian statehood first.

The incident also comes amid separate reports of possible Saudi Israeli contact at the official level. Israeli media reported that Netanyahu met with several Middle Eastern officials, including a Saudi representative, during his recent visit to the United Arab Emirates. A senior Saudi official denied a day earlier that any such meeting between Saudi and Israeli officials had taken place.

With Saudi Arabia having no formal diplomatic channel to coordinate directly with Israel, even a logistical matter like retrieving stranded airline passengers requires the kind of indirect, third party arrangement reflected in flydubai’s decision to continue the journey independently, underscoring how far the two countries remain from normalized relations despite ongoing American pressure and periodic reports of quiet contact between officials on both sides.