Duvi Honig is Founder & CEO, Orthodox Jewish Chamber of Commerce
The attempted attack aboard Flydubai Flight FZ1073 should force Israel to ask one urgent question while it expands the investigation beyond its own borders: What does Israel allow into its airspace, and who does it allow to control an aircraft carrying Israeli citizens?
Israeli officials say the co-pilot stabbed the captain and tried to crash the Dubai-to-Tel Aviv flight before passengers and crew intervened. The plane was ultimately brought under control and landed safely in Saudi Arabia. The suspect is in Saudi custody, and his motive remains under investigation.
Israel has already announced that it will increase security checks on pilots flying into the country. That is important. But the announcement also raises a more immediate question: Is a clear standard for this not already in place?
Channel 12 News reported that Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) Director David Zini had warned for months that security arrangements on flights from the UAE were insufficient.
In addition, Flydubai’s agreement to operate in Israel explicitly states that all pilots must be from countries that have normalized relations with Israel, which does not include Oman. The co-pilot who tried to crash the plane was from Oman.
So how could this happen?
Before looking outward, Israel needs to start with a simple internal checklist of what can never be allowed.
Who cannot fly an aircraft into Israeli airspace? Who cannot be placed in control of an aircraft carrying Israeli citizens? What intelligence concerns, affiliations, background issues or warning signs should trigger additional scrutiny before a pilot is ever put in that position?
Once those red lines are defined, Israel should go through them one by one and ask a second question: what system is in place to make sure each one cannot happen?
Who verifies the identities and backgrounds of foreign pilots? What information does Israel receive before they fly toward the country? What happens when a pilot, despite agreements proscribing it, comes from a country that does not have diplomatic relations with Israel? What triggers a deeper review? And who is ultimately responsible for determining that a person can safely be entrusted with an aircraft full of Israelis approaching Israeli airspace?
If Israel cannot answer those questions clearly today, that is where the investigation needs to begin.
A commercial aircraft is not simply transportation. In the wrong hands, it can become a weapon capable of striking an airport, a population center or critical infrastructure. At the same time, the person controlling that aircraft is responsible for the lives of every passenger sitting behind the cockpit door.
That gives Israel two security responsibilities at once: protecting Israelis inside the aircraft and protecting Israel from the aircraft itself.
The Flydubai incident showed how quickly those two concerns can become one.
There are, of course, serious questions that must be investigated outside Israel. Flydubai's vetting and security procedures deserve scrutiny. Saudi authorities need to determine the co-pilot's motive and whether he acted alone. The UAE and its aviation regulators will have their own questions to answer. If warning signs existed, investigators need to know who saw them, who missed them and why.
As for Israel, although it cannot control every foreign airline, every aviation regulator or every hiring decision made overseas, it can control the standard it requires for anyone entrusted with flying an aircraft into Israeli airspace or carrying Israeli citizens.
That is why the internal review has to come first.
Start by defining clearly what can never be allowed. Then show exactly what safeguard is supposed to prevent each risk. Next, examine this incident against that checklist and identify where the system failed or where no system existed at all. Close those gaps immediately.
Only after that should Israel expand the investigation abroad and determine what responsibility belongs to the airline, foreign regulators, governments or anyone else involved.
Israel is rightly known around the world for taking aviation security seriously. But strong security is not measured only by the protections we already have. It is also measured by how quickly we recognize the vulnerabilities we did not think to check.
This is not an issue that can wait for the conclusion of a long international investigation. Israelis are boarding foreign airlines every day. Pilots are being entrusted with their lives every day. Aircraft are approaching Israeli cities, airports and infrastructure every day.
The priority should therefore be clear: first make sure Israel knows its own red lines, knows who is sitting in every cockpit headed toward the country, and has a real mechanism to act when something does not meet its security standard.
Then investigate outward.
The goal is not to assign blame before the facts are known. It is to make sure the most immediate danger is addressed first. Israel's first responsibility is to protect its citizens and its airspace. That has to begin at home.