Benjamin Netanyahu’s campaign finally got the dramatic election-season image it had been waiting for when the Israeli occupation prime minister appeared at Ben Gurion Airport to greet Zionist passengers who had just survived a “potentially catastrophic Flydubai flight,” according to the Zionist political analyst Tal Schneider of Zman Yisrael.
Schneider noted that Netanyahu’s public-relations team had spent the campaign waiting for “the right picture”—and found it in the aftermath of Flydubai Flight FZ 1073, whose passengers narrowly escaped what she described as a potential disaster.
According to Schneider, the Likud has lost some of its momentum in recent weeks, falling to 18 seats in some opinion polls. At the same time, the Amcha Yisrael party, founded by Reserve Brigadier General Ofer Winter, has helped bring back to the right-wing bloc voters who had been undecided about voting for Likud. Meanwhile, the strengthening of the Joint List and the United Arab List, Ra’am, has weakened Gadi Eisenkot’s bloc and stabilized Netanyahu’s bloc enough, according to the writer, to prevent Eisenkot from forming a government.
“The security questions surrounding the flight remained in the background, including how the Omani co-pilot was assigned to the flight, what checks had been conducted beforehand, and what lessons could be drawn from the incident,” Schneider said.
Against this backdrop, she pointed to Netanyahu adviser Yonatan Urich’s swift political exploitation of the incident, coming a day after the prime minister had briefed Yair Lapid, at Lapid’s request, on security information. Lapid said after the meeting that he did not take the threats lightly but had heard no new details.
Schneider added that Urich accused Lapid and Naftali Bennett of mocking Netanyahu’s warnings, prompting Lapid adviser Niv Demor to ask, X: “Did Netanyahu know they were going to hijack a passenger plane carrying ‘Israelis’? “How did he fail to prevent it? And why did ‘innocent citizens’ once again have to prevent the disaster?”
Bennett also stepped up his criticism, questioning the value of warnings if they were not accompanied by measures to prevent the danger.
The dispute continued over which party had possessed advance information. Media reports cited a “political source” as saying that Lapid had been briefed about “increased anti-Israeli activity abroad.” Lapid responded that the warning had existed for more than two years and had nothing to do with aircraft or what happened, describing the account as “another lie and another lie.”
Schneider concluded that the attempt to portray Netanyahu as having issued an advance warning raises questions about the nature of the warning conveyed to Lapid, the extent of its connection to the incident, and whether there was a specific danger known to the government—and why it was not prevented.
With less than four weeks remaining before the vote, the writer said dramatic events could still change the agenda, coinciding with ceremonies commemorating the October 7 events. Nevertheless, according to Schneider, “victory sentiments” have begun to emerge within Likud, even though opinion polls do not give Netanyahu’s bloc a majority to form a government, while its supporters are focusing on the possibility of preventing Eisenkot’s bloc from coming to power.