Symbolic First-Ever Commercial Flight from Israel Lands in Bahrain

Oct. 19, 2020

Oct. 18-- Manama/ Tel Aviv -- One month after Israel and Bahrain agreed to normalize relations, a high-level Israeli and US delegation landed in the Gulf state's capital on Sunday on the first-ever commercial flight between Tel Aviv and Manama.

"This is a historic visit, and I want to thank you both for being here today," Bahrain's Foreign Minister Abdullatif al-Zayani said upon receiving US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Israeli National Security Advisor Meir Ben Shabat at Bahrain International Airport.

"Today, we build on that historic occasion at the White House last month, taking the next steps to implement the declaration in support of peace and the Abraham Accords," he added.

He said that this approach of engagement and cooperation was "the most effective, the most sustainable means to bring about a genuine and lasting peace, one which safeguards the rights of all the Middle East's peoples."

"Such a peace will bring a new stability and prosperity to the region," he said.

An El Al Israel Airlines Boeing 737 took off from Tel Aviv before noon ( 0900 GMT) and landed some three hours later in Manama, the Israeli Foreign Ministry confirmed.

It was the first official flight with a number -- LY973 -- though no private individuals had been able to purchase tickets for it, a spokeswoman told dpa.

Aviation -- among them dates for the first "real" commercial flights to be boarded by regular Israeli and Bahraini travellers -- would be one of the topics of discussion in planned bilateral talks and working group meetings.

Other areas such as diplomacy, medicine, technology, trade and tourism were also set to be covered.

"I couldn't be more thrilled to be here, to take the first commercial flight to Bahrain," Mnuchin told reporters on the landing strip of Israel's Ben Gurion International Airport, shortly before take-off.

Mnuchin later added he believed that bilateral trade between Israel and Bahrain had "enormous" potential.

"I think this [the Abraham Accords] is the most extraordinary outcome in the last 25 years," he said of the normalization deals signed at the White House between both Israel and Bahrain and Israel and the United Arab Emirates ( UAE) last month.

"I think 10 years from now when we look back at this, this will be as significant if not more significant than both the Egyptian treaty and the Jordanian treaty in how it has changed the whole region -- economically, in particular, but also from a security standpoint and a cultural standpoint," he told reporters on board the flight.

In 1979, Egypt became the first Arab state to sign a peace treaty with Israel. Jordan became the second in 1994. Since then, no other Arab states had signed normalization deals with Israel -- until last month.

By signing the deals, the UAE first and Bahrain second abandoned a 2002 Arab League precondition for normalization that Israel must first recognize an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.

This was seen as a betrayal by furious Palestinians.

Instead, Israel agreed only to suspend a planned annexation of parts of the occupied West Bank, which the Palestinians claim for their own state.

Shabat, who headed the Israeli delegation on Sunday, said it would "translate into concrete plans" the declaration signed at the White House on September 15. According to information from the Israeli side, various unspecified agreements were also to be signed.

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