ISRAEL: Blair’s airborne adventure

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Maybe it’s just a hangover from the state of maximum vigilance imposed during President Bush’s recent visit, but Israel’s air defenses tend to be on high alert all the time anyway.

So when a small aircraft entered Israeli airspace from Egypt Monday without identifying itself, fighter jets were scrambled. The plane’s pilots quickly made contact when the jets appeared, and the passengers apparently never knew of the imminent threat.

It’s the sort of thing that happens in Israel about once a month, and wouldn’t have merited a paragraph if not for one hitch: The plane was carrying Tony Blair, former British prime minister and current international envoy to the Middle East.

Blair was returning from the World Economic Forum summit in Sharm El Shiekh, Egypt, and was on his way to the Palestine Investment Conference that wrapped up yesterday in the West Bank city of Bethlehem.

Details of the near-miss emerged yesterday in the Israeli media, which reported it matter-of-factly and cited anonymous Israeli security sources.

The British coverage was a little more breathless, with one headline proclaiming Blair was ‘moments from death.’

--Ashraf Khalil in Jerusalem

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