Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel is in a tight race with a national election approaching, and his supporters and opponents quickly seized on Wednesday’s narrowly averted disaster on a FlyDubai flight to Tel Aviv.
Hours before the mostly Israeli passengers on the plane, Flight 1073 from Dubai, had even made it home, Mr. Netanyahu’s defense minister hinted that he and Mr. Netanyahu had tried to warn of some kind of attack.
“When the prime minister and I sound warnings and security alerts based on intelligence,” the minister, Israel Katz, said in a statement, “it is worth you — our outside enemies and out-of-the-loop formers from within — listening and taking them seriously.”
On Tuesday, a day before the crisis aboard the FlyDubai flight, Mr. Netanyahu was filmed at an Israeli Air Force base saying, “We have indications that, ahead of the elections, our enemies will try to attack us.”
But neither Mr. Netanyahu or Mr. Katz provided any specifics with their warnings, leading opponents to dismiss the admonitions as election spinning and fear mongering.
Naftali Bennett, a political rival, had criticized Mr. Netanyahu’s broad warning. On Tuesday, he said on Israeli television that he could get alerts from a phone app and asked what the prime minister was doing to thwart the threats.
On Wednesday’s flight, several passengers and crew members overcame the co-pilot, who was stabbing the captain, according to witnesses and officials. The plane was sent into a nosedive, but two reserve pilots on board the flight have been credited with landing it safely in Saudi Arabia. Investigators have been seeking to determine a motive for the attack.
Yair Lapid, a centrist opposition leader, said on Thursday that he had received a security briefing from the prime minister late on Tuesday night. Without going into details about the classified briefing, Mr. Lapid said that from what he heard then, “There was no reason for panic,” adding that the threats Mr. Netanyahu had laid out were nothing new.
“There was no mention of a scenario of a plane hijacking,” Mr. Lapid said. “Not anything like it. Nothing.”
Mr. Netanyahu, Israel’s longest serving prime minister, has been struggling to maintain his reputation as the country’s national security czar, amid reports of the policy, military and intelligence failures leading up to the ahead of the deadly Hamas assault on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which ignited a devastating war in Gaza and conflicts across the Middle East. .
Much of the campaign for the Oct. 27 general election, which many Israelis and outside observers consider to be the most consequential vote in the country’s history, has focused on what Mr. Netanyahu knew and when.
After nightfall on Wednesday, Mr. Netanyahu went to Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport to greet the passengers of Flight 1073 when they landed. He spoke on camera with one of the Israelis who had subdued the attacker and credited the courageous actions of passengers and crew members for saving the day.
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