Saudi Arabia has torn down a significant part of the wall that the Arab world erected around Israel in order to isolate it and strangle its economy.  The U.K. Telegraph reports:

Saudi Arabia opened its airspace for the first time to a commercial flight to Israel with the inauguration on Thursday of an Air India route between New Delhi and Tel Aviv.

Air India 139 landed at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport after a flight of over 7-1/2 hours, marking a diplomatic shift for Riyadh that Israel says was fuelled by shared concern over Iranian influence in the region.

"This is a really historic day that follows two years of very, very intensive work," Israeli Tourism Minister Yariv Levin said in a radio interview, adding that using Saudi airspace cut travel time to India by around two hours and would reduce ticket prices.

This a much bigger deal than saving two hours and lowering  ticket prices.  The blockade against overflights by airliners to and from Israel was part of the Arab world's rejection of the legitimacy of Israel and their determination to "wipe it from the map" as Iran's leaders have put it in recent memory.  That policy now is tangibly rejected by the richest Arab state that is also the birthplace if Islam and guardian of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.

File photo of Air India B 787-8, the newest type in Air India's fleet and the type used on the New Delhi-Tel Aviv flights.

Saudi Arabia made no formal announcement of the flight, preferring instead to let the "facts in the air" speak to its policy change.  Israeli officialdom was not shy about publicizing it, though.  The U.K. Guardian reports:

"This is a historic evening.  The Israeli skies are connecting with the Saudi Arabian skies in one direct flight," the Israeli transport minister, Yisrael Katz, said when the jet landed at Ben Gurion airport.

"We are celebrating the strengthening relations with India and the first civilian connection with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states."

Note that the flight also overflew Oman, as several media reports acknowledged.  Here is a map from flightradar.com showing the flight plan as the historic journey was underway:

As can be seen, the Saudi route is far from the most direct line between the two cities.  Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq would have to start permitting flights to Israel for that to happen.  Iran is a hopeless case under the mullahs' regime (under the shah of Iran, there were direct flights from Tel Aviv to Tehran), but Oman's silent permission may indicate that the Arab world's solidarity is crumbling.

Israel and India have a growing diplomatic relationship – the two counties' leaders have exchanged cordial visits to each other's countries – and a healthy and growing economic relationship.

El Al, Israel's flag carrier, has a route from Bombay to Tel Aviv that now may take the next step: an Israeli airplane permitted to fly over Saudi territory.  That would be an even bigger deal and would represent a major step toward official Saudi recognition of Israel.

El Al is not pleased that its competitor between the two countries now has a routing advantage, but in actuality, it is not a huge problem.  There is far more traffic between Bombay and Tel Aviv than from New Delhi, because Bombay is the banking and commercial capital, and nearby is the India diamond industry center.  Israel and India are two of the biggest centers of that industry in the world.  And there is no advantage for Bombay-Israel travelers to connect in New Delhi, because that city is about two hours farther from Israel than Bombay.

The Arab airliner blockade was formerly so effective that there were virtually no flights eastward from Israel.  Almost 20 years ago, I was involved in negotiations between a major Japanese company and an Israeli company that had world-leading technology that Japanese manufacturers wanted to license.  The Israeli who was involved had to travel back from Osaka to Tel Aviv, and the preferred option at that time was to connect in Frankfurt – a detour of thousands of miles.

Since then, various routes from East Asia and South Asia to Israel were pioneered, making a European detour less attractive.  But until this week, none of these flights could overfly Arab territory.

When a dam or a dike develops a hole, you know what happens.  This is a case where that analogy may actually hold.  Consider this:

JERUSALEM, March 22 (Reuters) – Israel's tourism minister said on Thursday that Singapore Airlines and a Filipino airline were exploring the introduction of flights to and from Tel Aviv that would pass through Saudi airspace.