JERUSALEM — On Tuesday, after returning from meetings in the United Arab Emirates, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stood in front of an F-15 fighter jet and made a video warning that there might soon be an attack against Israel.
Hours later, there was.
The attempted hijacking of FlyDubai Flight 1073 this week set off a firestorm in Israel, not just because of its sensational details of midair bedlam and heroism, but also because of its uncanny timing: less than a day after Netanyahu’s vague warning, and smack in the middle of a tight election race in which his national security record is under scrutiny.
For Netanyahu’s supporters, the sequence of events was a testament to the vigilance and intuition of a seasoned leader they call “Mr. Security” at a time when Israelis and Jews worldwide feel endangered.
To his opponents, it was yet another security lapse on Netanyahu’s watch — and merely good fortune that disaster was averted narrowly one day after Netanyahu sought to stoke Israelis’ fears for political gain.
Earlier this week, after Netanyahu issued his warning from Tel Nof air base, the parliamentary opposition leader Yair Lapid questioned “whether the threats are real” or whether they were an attempt to delay the national election scheduled for Oct. 27.
Former general Gadi Eisenkot, whose party is narrowly leading Netanyahu’s Likud in most polls, accused Netanyahu of using the fighter jet backdrop for “propaganda purposes” and cautioned that it was “forbidden to mix Israel’s security and the election system.”
A day later, the critics were on the back foot, and Netanyahu appeared firmly in charge.
Moments after Flight 1073 issued a hijacking distress call, Netanyahu convened his national security aides. Fighter jets scrambled. At Netanyahu’s direction, the government said, FlyDubai flights to Tel Aviv were suspended on Wednesday pending the investigation into the Omani co-pilot, who allegedly stabbed the captain and tried to crash the plane before he was subdued and the plane safely landed in Saudi Arabia.
Netanyahu’s spokespeople spent Wednesday briefing Israeli political reporters that his rivals had failed to take his security warnings seriously, according to Yossi Verter, chief political commentator for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
By the time all 174 passengers landed in Tel Aviv on Wednesday evening, Netanyahu’s public relations machine was in full spin.
With TV cameras in tow, Netanyahu greeted the passengers at Ben-Gurion International Airport and embraced the hero Yaniv Hayun, an Israeli plumber who recounted to the prime minister how he put the alleged hijacker into a chokehold before pulling on the flight controls to steady the plane, just like he had seen on TV.
Netanyahu sang a song of blessing with the flight’s survivors — many of whom professed to be his voters.
“Netanyahu has divine assistance,” Yinon Magal, an ally of the prime minister and host of the Channel 14 talk show “The Patriots,” declared that night.
“Yesterday the heads of the opposition and the media spent a whole day digging at us, claiming that Netanyahu is fabricating security alerts and warnings, and using security for political purposes,” Migal wrote on X. “By the way, where are they all today? They’ve vanished.”
Mairav Zonszein, senior analyst on Israel at the International Crisis Group, a nonpartisan policy institute headquartered in Brussels, called the sequence of events this week “a remarkable coincidence that plays into Netanyahu’s hands.”
Over the weekend, Netanyahu was furiously fending off a fresh round of allegations that he had overlooked warnings before the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack from UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, from Egyptian officials, and even from his own military and intelligence aides.
But by midweek, the FlyDubai incident — and Netanyahu’s warnings — were dominating the domestic conversation.
In much the same way that Israelis have asked if Netanyahu had foreknowledge of Oct. 7, there were questions again this week about whether Netanyahu had an inkling of a potential hijacking plot.
Netanyahu said in interviews on U.S. television that he did not.
Online, more conspiratorial-minded commentators even wondered if the drama was orchestrated, and if the plane landed in Saudi Arabia, instead of Jordan, to force Israel to collaborate with Saudi Arabia — a country with which Netanyahu has sought to formalize relations.
Whatever the case, this week’s events this week encapsulated the political paradox that is Netanyahu, Zonszein said: In a moment of danger, Israelis again looked to Mr. Security “even though he failed at security.”
“People don’t trust Netanyahu, but at the same time, he’s a powerhouse,” she said. “He’s a master at manipulating and dominating the discourse.”
Now, with the investigation still in early stages, Netanyahu could reap further political gain.
In Washington, President Donald Trump told reporters that Iran might be linked to the attempted hijacking plot, “based on what I’m hearing.” Trump did not give further details.
So far, Netanyahu has refrained from blaming Iran but has said that the suspect, based on his social media posts, was radicalized and wanted to kill Jews. If a connection to Iran is confirmed in the coming days or weeks, it would lend further credibility to Netanyahu’s warning and strengthen his domestic standing, some analysts said.
“In situations like FlyDubai, the country rallies around its leader,” said Dan Diker, the president of the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, a think tank. “But there’s something deeper going on, which is that Netanyahu has been warning for more than 30 years about the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
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