Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly planned to order the closure of the occupied country’s airspace to flights from Jordan last week after Amman retracted its approval of Netanyahu’s planned flight via Jordanian airspace to the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
According to Hebrew-language newspaper Maariv, Netanyahu took the step without consulting the cabinet or aviation officials, who reportedly panicked about the move.
Israeli Civil Aviation Authority director Joel Feldschuh reportedly tried to hamper the order from being implemented by flooding the Israeli premier’s office with a spate of relevant requests.
“It was really down to the wire. You have no idea what kind of international damage would have been done to Israel if this directive had been implemented on the ground”, Maariv cited an unnamed source as saying.
The source claimed that Netanyahu apparently changed his mind on the directive just minutes before it was slated to come into force last Thursday. Netnayhau’s office has not commented on the issue yet.
Defense Minister Benny Gantz, for his part, slammed Netanyahu’s reported intention to close the airspace as something “detrimental to Israel’s national security”.
“Netanyahu is driven by personal, political motivations and his actions run counter to Israel’s diplomatic agreements. This just shows that he has entirely lost his ability to exercise good judgement and is doing everything to look out for himself instead of for the country”, Gantz asserted.
The statement came after Jordan rejected the UAE-related flight path of Netanyahu’s plane following Israeli move to cancel a visit by the Jordanian crown prince to Al-Aqsa Mosquein occupied Al-Quds (Jerusalem).
Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman al-Safadi told CNN that Amman was “angry” with the occupation regime after the cancellation of Crown Prince Hussein bin Abdullah’s visit to the holy mosque over a dispute regarding security arrangements at the site.
Source: Agencies
