Israel announced on Thursday February 23 that Israeli airlines would now be allowed to cross the airspace of the Sultanate of Oman, a Gulf country which does not have official diplomatic relations with the Jewish state.
Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen hailed a "
historic decision that will shorten flight times to Asia, reduce costs for Israeli citizens and help Israeli airlines be more competitive
", according to a statement from his office.
“The sky is no longer a limit”
On Twitter, the Omani Civil Aviation Authority only wrote that "
the sultanate's airspace is open to all carriers that meet (its) overflight requirements
", without further details.
"
The Far East is not so far away and the sky is no longer a limit
," said Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu in a statement.
Benyamin Netanyahu was received in Oman in 2018 by former Sultan Qaboos, although Muscat does not officially recognize the Jewish state.
After his visit, the Israeli Prime Minister affirmed that the sultanate was ready to open its airspace to Israeli civil aircraft, which then seemed of limited practical interest, in particular for flights to Asia, for lack of permission to fly over Saudi Arabia.
Read alsoSayyid Badr al-Boussaidi: “We will not join the Abraham Accords” of normalization with Israel
But in July 2022, Ryad, which does not have diplomatic relations with Israel, announced the opening of its airspace to "
all carriers
", including Israelis.
In 2020, Oman welcomed the normalization of relations between Israel and other Gulf countries, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, which had broken with decades of an Arab position making the settlement of the Palestinian question the condition for rapprochement with Israel.
Saudi Arabia will not normalize relations with the Jewish state without the establishment of a Palestinian state, the country's foreign minister, a regional heavyweight, said last January.
/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/KMEYMJKESBAZBE4MRBAM4TGHIQ.jpg)
