THE WASHINGTON POST: Flydubai hijacking turns into flashpoint in Israeli election

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was quick to seize the opportunity to associate himself with the heroics of Israelis who helped stop a FlyDubai co-pilot from crashing a plane bound for Tel Aviv.

As more details emerge about the dramatic events aboard Flight FZ1073 from Dubai, the incident risks backfiring on him as it becomes a key political battleground just three weeks before a tight Israeli election.

The attempted hijacker, Hamam al-Hammami, 29, is a citizen of Oman - a country that doesn’t have diplomatic relations with Israel - and had a history of engaging with radical views that saw him dismissed from a previous job, Bloomberg has reported.

As Israel marks the third anniversary of one of its biggest security failures, the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, opposition leaders and a broad array of commentators are arguing that there are similarities between the two events.

“A bold line connects then and now, a culture of lies, cover-ups, and shirked responsibility introduced by Netanyahu’s government,” Gadi Eisenkot, a former military chief and the Prime Minister’s main rival, said on Sunday.

Netanyahu ordered an investigation to “thoroughly review all security aspects of foreign civil aviation to Israel,” his office said, following a cascade of revelations exposing flaws in screening foreign aircrews.

The announcement triggered calls for an independent inquiry and fed into one of the election’s most potent themes: accountability for security failures.

It’s unclear how the FlyDubai event will influence voting: whether government opponents will succeed in using the latest revelations to erode the public’s faith in Netanyahu’s government, or whether the ruling coalition will gain supporters who view it as tougher and best suited to deal with security threats.

Recent polls show the opposition bloc losing a bit of ground, but mostly to a newcomer party promising to lower the cost of living rather than to Netanyahu. It remains unlikely that either the coalition or opposition will win the majority needed to form the next government when Israelis vote on October 27. That could lead to unusual deal-making - or another election.

Hamas Attack

Netanyahu’s opponents have repeatedly attacked him not only for failing to prevent the Hamas attack which led to the war in Gaza, but for refusing since then to establish a state commission of inquiry that could assign responsibility.

Commentators and opponents to his left and right have been quick to note a second parallel: in both cases, the government didn’t do its job and ordinary Israelis jumped in to save their fellow citizens.

“The similarities between the two disasters, the one that happened and the one that was averted, are bone-chilling,” wrote Nahum Barnea in centrist newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth. “The same appalling negligence and corner-cutting that preceded both; the same civilian courage and resourcefulness that saved the day in real time.”

FZ1073, with 174 passengers, nearly all Israeli, departed Dubai last Wednesday and was an hour away from Tel Aviv when a passenger heard screaming from the cockpit. Captain Smit Machchhar was being attacked with an ax by his co-pilot, Al-Hammami, but managed to unlock the cockpit door. Passengers rushed to the front, subdued the attacker, and ministered to the captain. Two off-duty pilots onboard landed the aircraft in Saudi Arabia.

In Israel, much of the blame for the security lapse has been placed on the transportation ministry, led by Miriam Regev, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party and close political ally.

Responsibility for international carriers lies with the ministry, which operates a security department that relies on freelancers. Ministry officials have said they’d made clear they couldn’t fulfill the task, Army Radio reported on Sunday, yet Netanyahu decided to back Regev’s demand to retain oversight.

“FlyDubai was given explicit directives, promised to run the necessary background checks on its personnel, and confirmed it programmed Israel-bound nationality constraints into its crew assigning system,” the transport ministry said.

It added that its security division has no access to flight lists, implying there is little to no oversight of foreign carriers to ensure they don’t deploy crews from countries that lack diplomatic relations with Israel.

This is happening as Israel marks the memorial day for the October 7 attacks, which saw 1,200 people killed and 250 abducted and triggered a conflict that claimed the lives of more than 70,000 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry.

Multiple media reports have suggested Netanyahu was warned about the attacks by both Emirati and Egyptian officials, yet took no action -- accusations he has sweepingly denied.