Israeli Prime Minister’s flight to the U.S. on Thursday bypassed the airspace of France and other European countries. The unusual flight path was likely chosen to “avoid problems related to the International Criminal Court’s warrant for Netanyahu’s arrest,” The Times of Israel observed.
“While the standard flight path from Israel to New York transits over France, the Israeli premier’s ‘Wing of Zion’ plane took a longer and circuitous route above the Mediterranean Sea,” The Financial Times (UK) reported. “The plane passed through the Strait of Gibraltar to the Atlantic Ocean and traversed briefly over Greece and Italy.”
Prime Minister Netanyahu is headed for New York to address the UN General Assembly and meet with President Donald Trump at the White House.
The visit comes as French President Emmanuel Macron, whose popularity at home has reached a record low, seeks to position himself as a global statesman. “Macron wants to pull off a grand diplomatic coup” at the UN “by collecting several Western countries together to recognize a Palestinian state,” Politico noted ahead of the international gathering.
Israel’s Ynetnews reported Thursday:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plane took an unusual route Thursday as he traveled to New York for the United Nations General Assembly, in what appeared to be an effort to avoid flying over European countries—especially France.According to publicly available flight tracking data, the prime minister’s plane, “Wing of Zion,” took the southernmost route possible, avoiding French and other European airspace entirely. Instead, it flew over the Mediterranean Sea, passed over Greece and Italy, then exited to the Atlantic Ocean via the Strait of Gibraltar.The flight path was reportedly chosen to ensure the plane only crossed airspace of countries considered safe in the event of an emergency landing.The decision was likely influenced by a desire to avoid French airspace, possibly due to tensions with President Emmanuel Macron and concern over the risk of enforcement of an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant, should an emergency landing occur in a country that is party to the Rome Statute.
In November 2024, the Hague-based ICC issued an arrest warrant against Prime Minister Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. The international warrant was based on absurd charges of ‘war crimes’ allegedly committed by the two leaders while overseeing the military operation to secure the release of 251 hostages from Hamas captivity in the aftermath of the October 7 attack, in which the invading terrorists massacred more than 1200 people.
The ICC, set up under the framework of the 1998 Rome Statute, has 123 signatory states. France and most of the European Union member countries have endorsed the treaty.
The Trump administration is currently considering sweeping sanctions against the ICC. In the past, the kangaroo court had pushed a similar campaign of lawfare against U.S. servicemen who fought against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan.
“The United States is considering imposing sanctions as soon as this week against the entire International Criminal Court, putting the court’s day-to-day operations in jeopardy in retaliation for investigations of suspected Israeli war crimes,” Reuters reported Wednesday. “Washington has already imposed targeted sanctions on several prosecutors and judges at the court, but naming the court itself in the sanctions list would be a major escalation.”
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