Israel makes Historic Flight as Kushner says he is Confident the Abraham Accord will Bring Peace....
01 September 2020
El Al fight LY971 carrying Israeli and US officials from Tel Aviv to Abu Dhabi on Monday, August 31 establishes two landmarks: it is Israel’s first commercial flight to the Gulf emirate and also the first to openly cross through Saudi air space to reach its destination.
Aboard were a US team headed by presidential adviser Jared Kushner and National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien and an Israeli delegation led by National Security Adviser Meir Ben Shabat.
Their task is to start filling in the diplomatic, financial and economic blanks in the historic normalisation accord concluded by Israel and the United Arab Emirates earlier this month.
Kushner hopes to add more Arab governments to the deal and cap it with a ceremonial signing ceremony led by President Donald Trump at the White House in September.
On Saturday, August 29, the UAE President Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan formally lifted the long economic boycott of Israel.
In Jerusalem on Sunday to meet Israel’s leaders, Kushner declared “The stage is now set” for “previously unthinkable” economic, security and religious cooperation, with more to come.
The royal decree allows trade and financial agreements between the two countries in support of “bilateral cooperation, in order to support [the establishment] of bilateral relations,” the UAE news agency reported.
Israelis and Israeli firms are now free to conduct business in the UAE, a federation of seven sheikhdoms, and they are allowed to purchase and trade Israeli products.
From the Israeli captain’s emotional greeting in Arabic upon take-off in Tel Aviv, to the warm Emirati reception on the ground in scorching Abu Dhabi, it was obvious this was no typical flight.
The end times roster is chock-full these days, so many players having been revealed it's nothing short of astounding.
Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed has been revealed as the main driver of Pope Francis' Chrislam One World Religion endeavours,
Emmanuel Macron in his own words has been revealed as the possible future ruler of a Ten Nation Confederacy, and then there's Jared Kushner who is the architect of the Abraham Accord to bring peace to the Middle East.
For the moment, at least, it's working.
All throughout the Middle East there is a renewed sense of hope and excitement, as Israel and the UAE take the first concrete steps outlined in the Abraham Accord.
A new ‘sense of hope’: Israel-UAE flight feels like a start of a bigger journey….
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FROM THE TIMES OF ISRAEL: Monday’s El Al flight LY971 marked the first-ever direct flight from Israel to the United Arab Emirates.
The journey was steeped in symbolism. US and Israeli flags adorned the tarmac at Ben-Gurion Airport as Israeli music played, and the word “peace” was emblazoned in English, Hebrew and Arabic above the cockpit window of the Boeing 737.
On board, the “Making History” motto featured prominently on each seat’s headrest covering and complimentary fabric bags of the “Abraham Accord Inaugural Flight” were distributed.
A special menu was prepared, highlighting touches of Middle Eastern cuisine, and the director-general of Israel’s Health Ministry even handed out a limited-edition face-mask featuring the Israeli and Emirati flags.
The American diplomats on board sported a tri-country face mask amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Prior to boarding, the deal’s mastermind, President Donald Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner, waxed poetic on the flight’s meaning.
“While this is an historic flight, we hope it will start an even more historic journey for the Middle East and beyond,” he said.
“This is a very hopeful time and I believe that so much peace and prosperity is possible in the region and across the world.”
But only after take-off did that take on concrete significance, as the El Al aircraft veered east toward the desert terrain rather than west over the Mediterranean Sea as it does on nearly all its outbound flights.
Pilot Tal Becker [above] proudly announced the historic moment when the El Al aircraft crossed into Saudi airspace for the first time ever, noting that the flight would now take “just” three hours and 20 minutes to Abu Dhabi, rather than the more than seven hours it would have taken to circumvent the Arabian Peninsula.
Kushner visited the traveling press corps in the back of the plane while over Saudi airspace to say it was “gracious” of the kingdom to make such an extraordinary gesture, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a recorded in-flight address over the loudspeaker noting so as well.
By granting Israel access, Saudi Arabia gave a strong indication of its approval of the newfound normalisation with Israel and raised hopes it could be next to take its covert relations with Israel up a notch.
Arab so-called Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said “it hurts us very much” to see the Israeli plane landing in the UAE.
He noted that the plane was called “Kiryat Gat,” a southern Israeli town built where Arab villages once stood before the war they began surrounding Israel’s establishment in 1948.
“We would have liked to have an Emirati plane landing in liberated Jerusalem, but we live in a difficult Arab era,” Shtayyeh said.
While the Palestinians have cut off ties with the US, Kushner said the US and the “whole region” is ready to help them.
“But they can’t be stuck in the past. They have to come to the table,” he said.
Developing extraordinarily!
Israeli Missile Attack Targets Damascus…..
01 September 2020
Two Syrian soldiers were killed and seven others wounded on Monday by an Israeli missile attack that targeted military sites south of the Syrian capital Damascus, state news agency SANA reported.
Citing a military statement, the report said the attack was carried out from the direction of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
It added that the Syrian air defences intercepted most of the missiles before reaching their targets.
The attack left damage to the targeted sites.
Meanwhile, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said powerful explosions were heard in the countryside of Sweida and Daraa provinces in southern Syria as a result of the Israeli attack.
The attack targeted military sites south of Damascus and the towns of al-Sheikh Maskin and Izraa in the countryside of Daraa province, according to the Britain-based watchdog group.
It said the Syrian air defences were triggered by the attack.
Israeli drones hit Iranian sites in Syria killing 23 people……..
Syrian Observatory for Human Rights stated that, on Saturday night, unidentified drones attacked targets of pro-Iranian groups at a base in the eastern suburb of Deir Ezzor in Syria, killing 12 people.
According to exclusive information to The Eastern Herald, 23 Iraqi and Afghan people were killed in Syria, and many vehicles and ammunition were destroyed.
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