For a tense stretch on Wednesday morning, the news carried Israelis back to an older chapter of terror.
Not October 7. Not the bus and café bombings of the Second Intifada. Further back: to the aircraft hijackings of the 1970s, when a flight carrying Israelis could become a hostage crisis and an entire country would wait anxiously to learn where the plane had landed and what would happen to those aboard.
Dawson’s Field in Jordan. Sabena. Entebbe. Names that older Israelis need little explanation for, and that younger Israelis know from the history books.
Then came Wednesday’s alerts, in rapid succession: a flydubai plane en route from Dubai to Tel Aviv transmitted an emergency signal associated with hijacking. The plane changed course in midair. Israeli fighter jets were scrambled.
Suddenly, a routine flight home became the focus of national attention.
Israelis followed updates with bated breath, they were ‘our passengers’
Where was the plane? Who was controlling it? Had someone seized it? Were the passengers safe?
Israelis followed the updates with bated breath. Those with relatives or friends aboard faced their own immediate terror. Others needed no personal connection. A plane carrying Israelis, in distress somewhere over the region, was enough.
Each update mattered. A report that contact had been lost deepened the anxiety; the first indications that the plane was not hijacked offered hope.
Then came the news everyone had been waiting for some 90 long minutes: the aircraft landed safely in Saudi Arabia. The passengers were safe.
Relief.
The first reports suggested an altercation between the pilots rather than a hijacking. That offered further reassurance: perhaps this frightening episode would turn out to have an explanation other than another attempt at the wholesale murder of Israelis.
But subsequent accounts suggested something much darker, and Israeli officials increasingly described the incident as an attempted terrorist attack, with the Omani co-pilot suspected of stabbing the Indian captain and trying to crash the aircraft with all aboard, 9/11 style.
Alongside those reports, however, came accounts of remarkable resourcefulness. Israeli passengers and other crew members had intervened and subdued the suspected attacker. They averted disaster even as the aircraft plunged.
They had refused to remain passive while their lives, and the lives of everyone around them, were in danger.
That brought pride alongside relief. “How Israeli,” many undoubtedly thought.
The older hijacking stories are remembered largely through the commandos who ultimately rescued the hostages. Wednesday’s emerging story centered on passengers and crew helping save themselves, while the emergency was still unfolding in the air.
Ordinary people rose to meet extraordinary danger
Ordinary people on an ordinary journey home had found themselves facing an extraordinary danger. They rose to meet it.
Clips circulated of passengers clapping and singing “Am Yisrael Chai” (the People of Israel live) after the plane landed in Saudi Arabia. The song expressed what many watching at home felt as well: joy that they were alive, pride that passengers had acted, and gratitude that the morning ended in celebration rather than mourning.
The relief extended well beyond the cabin.
Israel is a small country, and in moments like these it feels smaller still. People who have never met became “our passengers.” Their danger was followed on phones across the country. Their survival was a national relief.
That does not erase the country’s divisions. Indeed, by early afternoon, the incident was already being drawn into arguments about the election and the prime minister’s security warnings.
But before that came a simpler, shared response: let them be safe. And then, thank God, they are.
Crucial questions remained on Wednesday about vetting processes for pilots flying to Israel and the sequence of events in the cockpit. False reports and rumors spread quickly. The entire incident will require a thorough investigation.
But the passengers who overcame the co-pilot did not have the luxury of waiting for certainty before acting. Nor could they wait, as in the 1970s, for commandos to come to the rescue. They acted with extraordinary courage and resourcefulness.
Another striking difference from the hijacking era was the geography.
The aircraft was flying from Dubai to Tel Aviv, a route made possible by the Abraham Accords and normalization between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. It landed in Saudi Arabia, with which Israel still has no formal diplomatic relations.
An Israeli journey home through Dubai is now part of the region’s regular daily life. That would have been difficult to imagine during the era whose memories resurfaced on Wednesday.
Yet the limits of that regional transformation were also apparent. The Saudi authorities refused to permit an Israeli civilian aircraft to collect the passengers. Instead, another flydubai aircraft was sent, a prospect that – understandably, given the ordeal they had just endured – spooked some passengers.
The safe landing in Saudi Arabia was welcome. But the difficulty of arranging their return reminded everyone of the distance that remains between emergency cooperation and normal – even basic human – relations.
Still, the contrast was striking. Israelis experienced a hijacking fear associated with an older Middle East while traveling through a region that has changed profoundly.
That combination – new possibilities alongside enduring threats and dangers – is painfully familiar. And Wednesday abruptly exposed how fragile certain things are that we take for granted: like getting on a plane and expecting to get home safe and sound.
It also revealed how quickly anxiety, relief, and pride can once again become a shared national experience.
“Am Yisrael Chai,” the passengers sang after the plane landed in Saudi Arabia. Indeed. The passengers were alive. They had survived. They could sing.
And a country that for a terrifying hour and a half in the morning could hardly breathe was able to exhale again.
