Israel PM welcomes first commercial flight from Dubai

Israel PM welcomes first commercial flight from Dubai

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the inaugural flydubai flight from Dubai that touched down at the Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion airport on Thursday at 11.30am local time.

Flight FZ1163 took off from Dubai International airport at 9.40am. It is the first commercial air service between the two countries after the UAE and Israel formally normalised relations on September 15 by signing the US brokered Abraham Accords.

Welcoming the special delegation, Netanyahu said “there will be many more flights” going both directions “but you can only be first once.”

“This is a moment of history because this is the first commercial flight between Dubai and Israel.”

“And this is a pivotal moment because we're changing history. It's not that we're marching forward, we're flying with breakneck speed into a new era that is now clearly changing the Middle East. Changing the future for our peoples. They have embraced it with unbelievable enthusiasm,” said the PM.

“You can see that in the entrepreneurs from both sides, the tourist operators who know that there will be multitudes of tourists going to both sides, the technologists, the people who deal with agriculture, with health, with the