A private jet took off from Ben-Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv on Tuesday evening, landed for a few minutes in Amman, then proceeded to the Saudi capital, Riyadh, leaving Israeli media guessing who was on the plane.
Yossi Melman, who writes for the Maariv daily, tweeted that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or Mossad spy chief Yossi Cohen may have been on board the flight to the Arab kingdom, which has no diplomatic ties with Israel, possibly to discuss the situation in Syria.
Haaretz’s Avi Scharf tweeted that the trip was “EXtra rare.” He noted that U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper was in Riyadh around the same time and questioned whether the U.S.-registered jet had brought an official for a “snap trilateral.”
@avischarf EXtra rare: Israeli biz landed Riyadh ???? overnight for 1 hr, then back (n556us cl-60) Unrelated (prob), ???? SecDef @EsperDoD was also in the Kingdom yesterday
avi scharf
@avischarf Replying to @avischarf @EsperDoD So earlier I said 'prob unrelated', because I thought Esper had already left KSA for Europe, but now I realize he's still in the neighborhood - he just appeared in Baghdad. Did someone from Israel come for a snap trilateral in Riyadh? I don't know
The jet took off after about an hour in Saudi Arabia and returned to Israel, the Jerusalem Post reported. The same plane has also made trips between Tel Aviv and Cairo in recent months, it said.
Although Israel has no formal relations with Saudi Arabia, ties are gradually warming up, in part due to shared concerns over Iran’s growing influence in the region. In the absence of an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal, most of the cooperation has taken place behind the scenes.
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