Twelve Dead at Riyadh's Airport, and Still No Opening to Israel

A Houthi missile struck King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, killing twelve people and wounding more than three hundred, the clearest sign yet that the group's campaign against Saudi Arabia and Israel draws on the same arsenal and the same enemy. The strike landed inside Saudi territory rather than Israel's, a distinction that has mattered less with each new attack this year.

The shared target has not produced a shared posture in public. When an Omani co-pilot attacked the captain of flydubai flight 1073 on 2 October, forcing an emergency landing at Tabuk, Saudi authorities let the plane down and treated the injured on the ground. They would not let Israel send its own aircraft to collect the passengers stranded there, leaving El Al, Arkia and Israir to arrange repatriation through the United Arab Emirates instead.

Riyadh's official position has not shifted either. Saudi Arabia still says it will not normalize relations with Israel without a credible path to Palestinian statehood, and in August it signed a joint defense pact with Pakistan and Turkey rather than open any channel toward the Abraham Accords. President Trump has tied the civil nuclear cooperation Saudi Arabia wants from Washington to joining that same accord, treating the nuclear program as something Riyadh has to earn rather than something it is simply owed, in keeping with the transactional terms he has set for the relationship since returning to office.

What the Tabuk landing actually measures is how far that cooperation goes without a public agreement behind it: far enough to take in a stricken plane and treat its wounded, not far enough to let an Israeli aircraft land on Saudi soil for any reason. A missile that kills Saudis and a hijacking attempt aimed at Israelis describe the same enemy from two directions, and neither has been enough on its own to move the door that Riyadh has kept shut.