Peace on Paper, Profits in Practice |
As wartime restrictions at Ben Gurion Airport forced Israelis to seek escape routes through Jordan and Egypt, those “peace partners” revealed the limits of normalization.
Peace is easy when it costs nothing. The real test comes when it does.
This past week, Israel got its answer.
With Ben Gurion Airport operating under severe wartime restrictions — capped at a trickle of departures under the 50-passenger-per-flight rule — tens of thousands of Israelis and hundreds of Americans have been forced to find alternative routes home. The primary escape valves ran through Aqaba in Jordan and Taba in Egypt — two countries bound to Israel by formal peace treaties.
For a moment, it seemed those treaties meant something.
Then the mask slipped.
Israeli airline Arkia was forced to cancel all flight operations from Aqaba after Jordanian authorities abruptly reversed prior approvals. The issue was not security or safety. It was control — and money. Jordan refused to allow the use of........