flydubai flight FZ1073 from Dubai to Tel Aviv, with 174 people on board, almost all of them Israeli citizens, ended up in Saudi Arabia instead of Israel on Wednesday. According to the information so far, one pilot attacked the other with a knife in the cockpit in order to take control. The plane began to lose altitude sharply.

What followed sounds like a film script, but it is being told by the people who were there. The captain who was attacked, Indian national Smit Machar, managed to call for help and open the cockpit door. Passengers burst in, overpowered the attacker, and the plane made an emergency landing in the Saudi city of Tabuk, where the wounded captain is now being treated. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi called him a hero.

Yaniv Hayun, a plumber by trade, told the Israeli prime minister what it looked like inside. "I grabbed the attacker, got him in a chokehold and was the first to drag him out," Hayun said. While the others fought the attacker, he grabbed the controls and pulled them towards himself - the way he had seen it done on television. The dive stopped, and crew members then took over the flying.

Who and why - there is no answer yet. Netanyahu says it is too early to conclude who is behind the attack and whether it has anything to do with Iran, although Israel's ambassador to the UN has already called it a terrorist attack. Anonymous Israeli officials claim the attacker is an Omani citizen, but neither Oman nor the United Arab Emirates has officially commented. The co-pilot has been detained and is being questioned by the Saudi authorities. US President Donald Trump, after speaking with Netanyahu, said it looked as if "the co-pilot was a terrorist or a lunatic who stabbed the pilot".

Israel wants to know every pilot

The Israeli government's response came quickly. "We will know the identity of every pilot who flies into Israel, we will know who that person is and we will carry out certain security checks," said Doron Spielman, a spokesman for the prime minister's office. Netanyahu has instructed the authorities to tighten measures on all flights to Israel, for domestic and foreign carriers alike. flydubai, for its part, has suspended all flights to Israel until the investigation is over and called for restraint from "premature speculation".

Israel's foreign ministry described the incident as an attempted terrorist attack on Israelis, the Emirates and the Abraham Accords - the 2020 normalisation under which the two countries established diplomatic relations, direct flights and trade. Just a few days earlier, on Sunday, Netanyahu had met the Emirati president on a rare visit to the Gulf state.

Before political conclusions take over the story, it is worth remembering what is certain: the plane landed because the wounded captain opened the door and the passengers didn't wait for someone else to act. Everything else - the motive, any accomplices, whose interests the attack serves - is still to be established. How many times have we seen the culprit known before the facts are?