For years, Israel has been violating Saudi airspace with the complicity of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has been a key proponent of public normalization with Tel Aviv, despite widespread opposition from the Saudi population.
The Saudi authorities gradually opened their airspace to Israeli aviation, moving from secret visits to official declarations, as part of bin Salman’s effort to push normalization as a practical reality.
The official Israeli military Twitter account recently posted a video showing F-35 fighter jets being refueled while en route to bomb a Yemeni port on September 29. The video confirmed that the planes passed through Saudi airspace, with the Saudi village of Al-Humaidah visible on the left of the route.
Furthermore, CNN aired a report by correspondent Nick Robertson, who accompanied the crew responsible for refueling the F-35 jets. The report stated that the planes were on their way to bomb the Yemeni port of Hodeidah. Robertson described the scene: “The Saudi desert stretches to my right, the Egyptian coast to my left, and then a massive F-35 fighter jet fills the small screen in front of me.”
This, however, is not the first time Saudi Arabia has willingly opened its airspace to Israeli planes. Below is a timeline of notable instances of Saudi-Israeli cooperation in this regard:
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- In March 2018, Saudi authorities allowed Indian flights to cross their airspace en route to Israel. The first flight from Delhi landed in Tel Aviv on March 23, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described as a “breakthrough into vast markets.”
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- Israeli Minister of Transportation and Intelligence, Yisrael Katz, hailed it as a “historic flight,” as it marked the first time Saudi airspace was directly connected to Israeli airspace on a route to India.
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- In November 2020, Haaretz’s investigative editor Avi Scharf revealed movements of a private jet, preferred by Netanyahu, from Tel Aviv to Neom. This occurred concurrently with then-U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s visit to Neom for a meeting with bin Salman.
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- The following day, Axios reporter Barak Ravid tweeted, confirming: “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu secretly flew yesterday to the city of Neom in Saudi Arabia for a trilateral meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Mossad chief Yossi Cohen accompanied Netanyahu on the trip.”
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- In September 2020, The New York Times reported that Saudi Arabia allowed Israeli flights to and from the UAE to fly over its territory at the request of its neighbor, which had recently signed a normalization agreement with Israel. Netanyahu called the Saudi announcement a “huge achievement.”
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- The first flight from Tel Aviv to Abu Dhabi passed through Saudi airspace in late August 2020, marking the first time the Kingdom explicitly allowed a commercial Israeli plane to fly over its land. This prompted Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan to tweet that the permission for Israeli flights over Saudi territory would not alter the Kingdom’s “firm and established positions regarding the Palestinian cause.”
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- In August 2022, Saudi Arabia agreed to allow three Israeli airlines—El Al, Israir, and Arkia—to fly over its airspace. This decision came after U.S. President Joe Biden’s visit to Saudi Arabia. Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid welcomed the move, tweeting: “After a long and secretive road of diplomacy with Saudi Arabia and the U.S., we woke up this morning to happy news. Saudi aviation has announced the opening of airspace to Israeli airlines.”
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- In August 2023, Netanyahu appeared in a video thanking Saudi Arabia for its “warm stance” after an Israeli passenger plane was forced to make an emergency landing in Jeddah. “I greatly appreciate the warm position of the Saudi authorities toward the Israeli passengers whose flight was in distress and had to land in Jeddah,” Netanyahu said at the time.
