America Threatens to Ban All Israeli Planes from Landing in the US

The US has recently announced that it will ban all Israeli planes from entering the states, if American airlines are not permitted to operate emergency flights to and from Israel.

The Biden administration accused the State of Israel of being in violation of freedoms of the air. It believes that the country is only trying to create a crisis with the new administration, after the Israeli border was sealed owing to the rising number of cases of the coronavirus.

The administration has demanded that American planes be given the go ahead to land in Israel.

However, a source working in the Foreign Ministry of Israel denied being aware of any such threats made by the Biden administration.

Just last week, an official complaint was made by the US Department of Transportation to its Israeli counterpart. This happened shortly after El Al was allowed, as an exception, to continue landing in Israel despite the closure of the border. This particular news was later confirmed by several sources in the Israeli government.

El Al won a bid made by the Civil Aviation Authority in Israel and was given permission to operate flights to Dubai, as well as emergency flights. Israir has been continuously operating rescue flights going to and coming from Frankfurt.

Meanwhile, US-based airlines, such as United and Delta, and other carriers excluding El Al, have not been granted any permission to operate flights between Israel and America.

The US Department of Transportation also complained to the Transportation Ministry, as well as the Foreign Ministry, about this situation. It stated that Israel’s lack of permission violated that aviation agreements that these two countries have, which calls for equal treatment of American and Israeli airlines.

In other news, MK Eli Avidar of Yisrael Beytenu has clearly stated that he has no intention of getting vaccinated. This caused somewhat of a stir amongst public officials.

He pointed out that he is not a part of any at-risk group and has been making efforts to ensure that he is perfectly healthy. Therefore, he does not see the need of getting vaccinated. Avidar elaborated that in his opinion, only those who fall in at-risk groups should have the vaccine administered.

He recalled that he was the only MK present in Hong Kong when the SARS virus broke out. At the time too, there were vaccines and at-risk groups. However, Avidar stated that the government did not scare everyone back then. Rather, only the people who were the most at-risk from the virus protected themselves.

The MK went on to add that it is in the interests of the Health Ministry, as well as the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, to scare the people. His comments created a storm of responses coming in from several political figures. They spoke out concerned that certain words spoken by Avidar could harm public health.

The chair of Shas, MK Michael Malkieli, was especially infuriated and wrote a letter to the Knesset. In his letter, he accused the MK of Yisrael Beytenu of making some ‘very severe’ comments.