Israeli officials tell CBS the air force was ready to down flydubai FZ1073

CBS News reported on 5 October, citing two Israeli sources with direct knowledge, that Israel was prepared to shoot down flydubai Flight FZ1073 on 30 September with more than 150 Israelis aboard. The Dubai–Tel Aviv Boeing 737 MAX 8, carrying roughly 180 people, plunged some 14,000 feet after the Omani co-pilot — named by multiple outlets as Hamam al-Hammami — stabbed the captain and tried to crash the aircraft. By the account given to CBS, Israeli airspace was closed within about 90 seconds and jets scrambled seconds later, then recalled two to three minutes afterwards when the aircraft, about 400 miles out, turned toward Saudi Arabia. The jets never left Israeli airspace. The protocol, CBS’s sources said, reserves the order to the prime minister alone, and a shootdown would be “considered better than many hundreds being killed” if the plane struck the Azrieli towers or Ben Gurion Airport.

Nothing in that sequence has been confirmed by any Israeli government body. Times of Israel and Ynet ran versions the same day, Ynet attributing the account to Israeli decision-making circles rather than to CBS. What Israel has put forward on the record is narrower: the Jerusalem Post published an IDF-facilitated interview with an air-traffic control officer identified only as “A.”, who said he acts “after the incident is defined as unusual… At this stage, the aircraft is still very far from the country, so we act to clear the airspace in a way that meets the needs of the fighter jets being scrambled,” and declined the shootdown question as outside his unit’s remit. The Times of Israel reported on 6 October that Shin Bet agents are taking part in the interrogation in the UAE — its own single-sourced reporting. Netanyahu said on 30 September: “He’ll be investigated, interrogated and we’ll join the interrogation.”

The Israeli-press story underneath the aviation story is jurisdictional. On 5 October the Times of Israel reported a Transportation Ministry letter acknowledging that the ministry is responsible for the security of inbound flights, attributed to Minister Miri Regev; on 6 October it reported that most Arkia and Israir flights use planes and crews leased from foreign airlines under an arrangement approved by the prime minister. That is an admission of responsibility and a line of implication running to the prime minister’s office three weeks before polling. flydubai suspended its Israel flights pending the probe. In Dubai, the crown prince visited the flydubai captain in hospital on 6 October and praised him for “embodying the highest degrees of courage.”

Assessment: Read the leak as an artefact, not a disclosure. A decision never taken, described by two unnamed Israeli officials, arrives in an American outlet in the third week of a campaign and casts the system — and implicitly the man who alone could have given the order — as fast, grim and competent. The sanctioned JPost interview with an anonymised controller runs in the same direction while conceding nothing. What is verifiable is less flattering: the ministry has conceded it owns inbound-flight security, and the leased-crew arrangement traces to the PMO. Note also what nobody is narrating: Saudi jets scrambled, the UAE controls the interrogation and is honouring the captain. The quiet architecture held; the Israeli account of it is what should be handled carefully.