The story of an Israeli delegation visiting Pakistan was first broken by Haaretz newspaper to vociferous denials by the Imran Khan govt.
New Delhi: Reports of an Israeli plane landing in Pakistan on 24 October have been vociferously denied by Imran Khan’s government since the story was broken by the editor of the English edition of Israeli paper Haaretz some weeks ago. But the story is back in the public domain, with news portal Middle East Eye (MEE) quoting airport staff at Rawalpindi’s Noor Khan Airbase, saying that an Israeli plane did, indeed, land there.
The incident has attracted significant attention since Israel and Pakistan do not officially share bilateral ties, which means that aircraft registered from either of the two countries cannot enter the airspace of the other.
Moreover, the Imran Khan government has vociferously denied the Israeli newspaper story at several levels.
But if MEE is to be believed, a pilot revealed — the portal doesn’t say which airline the pilot belongs to — that the alleged BizJet flight was “in the air next to him” on 24 October just before landing at the military airbase. In addition, three staff members of the airbase verified the pilot’s claim. One of them said he noticed a car receive a delegation when the plane landed at the base.
The tweets that fuelled speculation
The matter sparked widespread concerns, especially on social media, when Avi Scharf, Haaretz’s English edition editor, first tweeted about this incident on 25 October citing a few real-time images from Flightradar24, a website that tracks aircraft and their movements, of the flight’s path.
According to the website’s tracking service, the flight took off from Israel’s Tel Aviv on the night of 23 October at 8 pm UTC (Greenwich Mean Time Zone), landed in Jordan’s capital city Amman on 24 October, and was then traced in Islamabad after a gap of 10 hours. The plane then returned to Tel Aviv at 00:40 UTC the same day.
Scharf had reasoned that this indirect route was deliberately hatched by the pilot so that a theory of the flight’s direct route from Israel to Pakistan could not be established.
Israeli 🇮🇱 bizjet flew from TLV to Islamabad, #Pakistan 🇵🇰, on the ground 10 hours, and back to TLV.
Cleared flight-plan with usual 5min groundtime trick in Amman
M-ULTI glex pic.twitter.com/haHn1NU73L
— avi scharf (@avischarf) October 25, 2018
The editor in a series of tweets had broken down the exact movement of the aircraft since it flew from Israel and was finally spotted in Pakistan. He claimed that it flew over Saudi Arabia but its movement was lost over the Gulf of Oman but appeared again when it was flying towards Islamabad.
It’s not an Israeli plane
The mystery deepens with media reports having confirmed that the plane was not registered in Israel. It was, in fact, registered on 22 February 2017 in the Isle of Man, a self-governing state in Britain’s territory, in the name of Multibird Overseas Ltd. It was manufactured by the Canadian company Bombardier Global Express.
However, facts of its ownership are still unclear.
Also read: The Indian state where development is more on a par with Pakistan than India
Pakistan denies all reports
Ahsan Iqbal, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz party leader, sought clarifications on 26 October from the government on the matter citing a BBC Urdu report’s coverage of the incident.
Information and broadcasting minister Fawad Chaudhry responded to his query the same day by tweeting, “The fact is that neither Imran is a Nawaz Sharif nor he has a fake Aristotle like you in his cabinet. We will neither hold secret talks with Modi nor Israel”.
حقیقی صورتحال یہ ہے کہ عمران خان نواز شریف ہے نہ اس کی کابینہ میں آپ جیسے جعلی ارسطو ہیں، ہم نہ مودی جی سے خفیہ مذاکرات کریں گے نہ اسرائیل سے، آپ کو پاکستان کی اتنی فکر ہوتی جتنی ظاہر کر رہے ہیں تو آج ہم ان حالات میں نہ ہوتے، اس لئے جعلی فکر نہ کریں ،پاکستان محفوظ ہاتھوں میں ہے https://t.co/JUtbZQbArj
— Ch Fawad Hussain (@fawadchaudhry) October 27, 2018
Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi also denied the presence of the Israeli aircraft in Pakistan, speaking at a press conference in Multan.
The country’s Civil Aviation Authority also rubbished the speculations through a statement conveying that no such incident took place at all.
Maintaining that the media reports lack authenticity, Pakistan President Arif Alvi reiterated Pakistan’s policy that it is “not going to establish any ties with Israel” in light of its support for the Palestinian cause.
Human Rights Minister Shireen Mazari also took to Twitter on 28 October calling media reports “fake news” altogether.
Interesting how Israeli media, with a plane fake news, managed to divert Pak media's attention away from the imp security issue of the Netanyahu-Oman visit which has strategic implications for Pak if Israel gets a permanent foothold in Oman where US mly already has a presence.
— Shireen Mazari (@ShireenMazari1) October 28, 2018
Also read: China backs Pakistan for ‘peace through dialogue’ with India