IRMO Brief 12/2020, "From Pariah to Partner: A View from Israel on a Realigned Middle East"

Introduction

Flight number LY971 on Monday 31 August 2020, was in many respects anything but a mundane commercial flight traveling to another Middle East destination. Traditionally, the Arab world’s maximum pressure campaign against Israel was designed not only to call into question its existence militarily, but crumble its legitimacy diplomatically – prohibiting Israeli citizens from entering their territories, banning Israeli and other airlines traveling to and from Tel Aviv from using their airspace, much less land in their airports, even referring to it merely as “the Zionist entity”. Much more fundamentally than technical disagreement over policy items or territorial arrangements, the Arab world has made clear what was best enunciated in the infamous 1967 Khartoum “Three No’s”: “No peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel.”

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