Aviation flaws and fragile peace: Broader implications from the Flydubai attack

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

63% : Formal relations between the UAE and Israel are far more intimate and diverse.
60% : "On behalf of the people of Israel, I want to thank the Saudi people for the warm welcome and goodwill shown", said Israeli Culture and Sports Minister Miki Zohar.
57% : And there will always be those who will consider links with Israel intolerable.
56% : Israel's response is likely to include a further tightening of its safety procedures.
53% : The same happened when Jordan forged diplomatic relations with Israel in 1994; a brief burst of enthusiasm, followed by a long, chilly peace.
52% : The identity of anyone booked on a flight to Israel is checked many hours before they are air-bound.
50% : Yet regardless of what transpires from the investigation, it is clear that, although the United Arab Emirates has an excellent record of safety and the country's security services are famous for their efficiency, something went wrong in both Israel's and the UAE's safety procedures.
49% : Israeli security services routinely check the identities of pilots flying planes into Israel and are known to maintain a database of such names.
47% : Saudi security also arrested and interrogated the suspect at Israel's request.
46% : Egypt continues to have an embassy in Israel, but Israeli tourists are nowhere to be seen in Egyptian hotels.
45% : Was it just the problem encountered at many airports around the world, where uniformed airline staff are checked less rigorously because they are assumed to be trustworthy, or did the rogue flydubai pilot benefit from accomplices on the ground? Israel's security services will also be re-examining their procedures for an event everyone dreads most: A decision on whether to shoot down a hijacked plane and kill all its passengers, rather than allow it to crash into a built-up area and kill even more people.
44% : Every air passenger leaving Israel is personally interviewed before check-in by security officers trained to spot evasion.
43% : Soon after Egypt established diplomatic relations with Israel in 1979, Israelis rushed to visit the tourist wonders of Egypt, yet hostility soon drove them away.
43% : For Israel has done little to change its image in the Arab world.
42% : Beyond Saudi Arabia's goodwill Israel's politicians were elated by the actions of Saudi Arabia, a country that does not have diplomatic relations with the Jewish state.
41% : For more than half a century, Israel built the world's most elaborate defence around civilian aviation.
40% : Closing these security and psychological gaps will cost Israel more than its politicians care to admit.
39% : Yet the message from the flydubai incident is precisely the opposite: That in the absence of a real reconciliation between Israelis and their Arab neighbours, which can only come with a solution to the suffering of the Palestinians, any diplomatic arrangements Israel makes with Arab leaders will not translate into greater security.
38% : The incident may also heighten concerns by other airlines flying to Israel.
37% : The attack exposes enduring structural weaknesses in Israel's airline security arrangements.
32% : Yet all this was rendered irrelevant on Sept 30, when Israel was just a step away from one of the worst attacks in its history.
30% : But it also acts as a reminder that Israel's determination to establish formal diplomatic relations with its Arab neighbours is unlikely to buy the country the security it craves until the broader resentment felt against Israel throughout the Arab world is tackled.

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