AIRLINES and experts have commended the Federal Government for signing of Bilateral Air Service Agreement (BASA) with Israel, saying that this would reduce the cost of travelling to the Holy Land on pilgrimage and encourge indigenous airlines to operate on the lucrative route.
The country’s major carrier, Arik Air, said it would be willing to operate on the route if given the nod. It added that it has passed the security audit by the Israeli authorities. This means it could fly into the Holy Land when allowed to do so.
Also, MedView Airline, said it would be willing to operate into the country.
Chief Executive Officer, BelujaneKonsult,Chris Aligbe, said with the agreement, it would become easier to travel to Israel because the route would more open, unlike in the past when airlines from Nigeria would have to make special requests before being allowed to land in Israel.
He said with the opening of the route between the two countries, airlines may be designated to operate the route and this would make the fare to the Holy Land cheaper.
He also pilgrims could travel to Israel anytime, unlike when the Christian community in Nigeria plans their trips only at certain periods of the year.
At the diplomatic level, Aligbe, a former Corporate Affairs Manager of the defunct Nigeria Airways, said the deal was an indication that there is an improvement in the relations between both countries.
“The BASA agreement between Nigeria and Israel showed that Israel is beginning to have more confidence in Nigeria, and there are a lot of bridge building between the two countries, which was not so in the past,” Aligbe said.
Former President of Cabin Crew Association of Nigeria, Olu Fidel Ohunayo, gave kudos to the Federal Government for facilitating the deal. He described it as good, noting that it would lead to cheaper fares to Israel, adding that a scheduled and direct flight from Nigeria would be more convenient for travellers.
He said the government should designate the airlines to the route, because Israeli authorities may not put a flight service to Nigeria, because the country does not like flying to African destinations.
He cautioned that delay would be against the business opportunities offered by the agreement.
CHRISTIANS and travel experts have commended the federal government for the successful signing of Bilateral Air Service Agreement (BASA).
They said the treaty will reduce the cost of travelling to the Holy Land on pilgrimage and empower Nigerian airlines to operate the lucrative route.
Aviation consultant and the CEO of Belujane Konsult, Chris Aligbe, said that with the agreement, it will become easier to travel to Israel because the route would become more open.
Aligbe said that with open air route between the two countries, Nigerian and perhaps Israeli airlines may be designated to operate the route, making the fare to the Holy Land cheaper and less stressful.
He also noted that pilgrims could now travel to Israel anytime unlike now when the Christian community in Nigeria plans to travel at certain periods of the year.
At the diplomatic level, Aligbe said that the BASA is an indication that there is a marked improvement in the relations between Nigeria and Israel.
“The BASA agreement between Nigeria and Israel shows that Israel is beginning to have more confidence in Nigeria and there are a lot of bridge building between the two countries, which was not so in the past,” Aligbe noted.
Former President of Cabin Crew Association of Nigeria, Olu Ohunayo, commended the federal government for facilitating the agreement.
He described the agreement as a good one, remarking that it will enhance cheaper fare to Israel.
Nigeria’s major carrier, Arik Air, also commended the BASA agreement, saying it would be willing to operate the route if so designated.
Also, Medview Airline said that it would be willing and eager to operate in the country.
Hadur Travel and Tour has unfolded its eight-day package for religious pilgrimage to Israel. The pilgrimage is for those interested in a private spiritual experience. Hadur also said it has a two in one package that involves a tour of Israel and Rome all in a single pilgrimage.
In a release, the head of the travel agency, Mrs. Funke Taiwo, said the tour will start on October 31 and end of November 7.
“Our Israel is aimed at putting together a tour offering a rewarding spiritual pilgrimage packages. It offers a less stressful, easy to manage pilgrimage. It is packaged in such a way that each day counts and the pilgrims have once in a life time spiritual experience,” she said.
According to the release, the pilgrimage kicks off on October 31 with the arrival of the pilgrims at the Ben Gurion International Airport. After the reception at the airport, the group will visit the local basilica built on the location of Simon the Tanner’s house where the impure animals’ vision took place.
The second day starts with a drive to the Yardenit Baptism site located on the banks of the Jordan River. There is also a drive to Haifa, the beautiful Baha’I Gardens to view the unique design, combining geometrical shapes and exquisite detailing with loving conservation of natural and historic landscape features. The pilgrims would then continue for a scenic drive of the Carmel. There will be an overnight stay at Tiberius.
Other itinerary of the pilgrims will include trip across the Sea and a drive around the western shores to visit the pilgrim shrines of the NW shores.There will be a visit to the Mt.of Beatitudes, the scene of the Sermon on the Mount. There will also be a visit to Nazareth and an overnight stay at Bethlehem.
At Bethlehem, the pilgrims will visit the Basilica of the Nativity where there will be the opportunity to kneel at the birthplace of Christ in the Grotto of Nativity. Before living Bethlehem, there will be a visit to the Fields of the Shepherds where the angel of Lord proclaimed the birth of the Messiah, the saviour of the world.
There will also be a trip to Jerusalem, including a tour of the Mount of Olives from where Jesus ascended to heaven after his resurrection from the mount. There is a magnificent view over all ancient and modern Jerusalem, the centre of the biblical world. The upper Room also in Jerusalem will be on the card.
At Jerusalem, a tour through the walls of the old of Jerusalem and walk in footsteps of our lord as he bore the burden of our sins to the cross at Golgotha. We visit the pools of Bethsaida where Jesus healed the man who had been crippled for 38 years. The pilgrim will return back to Nigeria on day 8.
Israel’s government has given details of 26 long-term Palestinian prisoners to be freed as part of a deal which will see peace talks resume next week, BBC reports.
A list of names chosen by a ministerial committee was published overnight.
The prisoners will be freed on Tuesday. The delay allows time for last-minute legal challenges by victims’ families.
The announcement came after Palestinian officials accused Israel of trying to sabotage the peace talks by approving nearly 1,200 new settlement homes.
An Israeli government spokesman dismissed the criticism, saying every peace initiative so far had proposed that the settlements in question become Israeli territory.
The Palestinians have previously agreed in principle to minor land swaps.
About 500,000 Jews live in more than 100 settlements built since Israel’s 1967 occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The settlements are considered illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.
On Sunday evening, a statement from the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that 26 prisoners would be released.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has warned Israel that it will respond in kind to any future air strikes.
Mr. Assad told a Lebanese TV channel a Russian contract to supply it with air defence missiles was being implemented – but did not confirm any deliveries.
BBC reports that Israel has warned it will attack if the system is used against it. It has carried out strikes to stop weapons being sent to Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Meanwhile heavy fighting continues in the strategic Syrian town of Qusair.
A Syrian doctor has described the horrors of living there, telling the BBC that more than 600 injured people were trapped in rebel-held districts with no access to medical assistance.
“They are waiting three to four days for drinking water and that doesn’t include the water they need for everyday use for washing their clothes and for normal day-to-day activities,” he said.
There were women and children “dying in the battle for more control” of the town, which lies 30km (18 miles) south-west of Homs, he said.
He said he had seen the bodies of “many” fighters from Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia movement.
Gen. Selim Idriss, the military chief of the main umbrella group of Syrian rebels, the Free Syrian Army, told the BBC on Wednesday that more than 7,000 Hezbollah fighters were taking part in attacks on Qusair.
Meanwhile, United States and United Kingdom officials are looking into unconfirmed reports that an American woman and a British man have been killed in Syria.
This follows a report aired by Syrian state TV showing the bodies and identity cards apparently of Westerners killed by government troops while fighting for the rebels in north-west Idlib province.
Israel launched air strikes on the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, the first such attacks since an eight-day war in November, Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement that controls the territory, and Israel’s military said.
“Occupation planes bombarded an open area in northern Gaza, there were no wounded persons,’’ a statement from the Hamas Interior Ministry said.
The strikes threatened to end an Egyptian-mediated ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, a truce that has kept the frontier relatively quiet since November, when some 170 Palestinians and six Israelis were killed in a brief cross-border war.
A statement from Israel’s military said Israeli aircraft targeted “two extensive terror sites in the Northern Gaza Strip’’, in response to rockets fired from the Palestinian enclave at Israel.
Earlier on Tuesday, the military said Palestinians launched three rockets attacks at Israel. Two landed in Gaza and one hit an open area in southern Israel, causing no damage or injuries.
An al Qaeda-linked group, called Magles Shoura al-Mujahedeen, claimed responsibility for the rocket salvo.
Israel launched its November 2012 offensive with the declared aim of ending Palestinian rocket fire into its territory.
Tuesday was the third time since the November truce that rockets from Gaza have hit Israel. There have been no casualties in the attacks.
Magles Shoura al-Mujahedeen, a hardline Islamist Salafi faction with a small presence in Gaza and Sinai in neighbouring Egypt, said in an online statement that it fired the rockets in response to the death of a Palestinian inmate in an Israeli jail.
Maysara Abu Hamdeya, 64, was serving a life sentence over an attempt to bomb an Israeli cafe and he died of cancer on Tuesday.
His death sparked some clashes in an Israeli prison, in East Jerusalem and in the occupied West Bank, where Palestinians, who view jailed brethren as heroes in a fight for statehood, have held several protests in recent weeks in support of prisoners.
Last month projectiles landed in the southern Israeli town of Sderot during U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit to Israel and the West Bank. Magles Shoura al-Mujahedeen claimed responsibility for those attacks too.
Israeli police said that on Tuesday they found remnants of one of those rockets, fired on March 21, in a kindergarten that was closed at the time of the attack, ahead of a Jewish holiday.
Israel said it holds Hamas responsible for any violence emanating from Gaza. Hamas has at times cracked down on the Salafis, seeing them as a threat to the stability of the impoverished Gaza Strip.
Along with the U.S. and most Western governments, Israel views Hamas as a terrorist group for its refusal to recognise the Jewish state or to renounce violence that included suicide bombings in a Palestinian uprising a decade ago.
Hamas seized control of the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip from Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud
Abbas’ Fatah movement in 2007.
Palestinians want to establish a state in the enclave along with the West Bank and East Jerusalem, territories Israel captured in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.
Iran denied on Friday allegations that it had trained militants arrested in Nigeria on charges of planning attacks on United States and Israeli targets there.
Deputy Foreign Minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, said such allegations were “made up as the result of the ill will of the enemies of the two countries’ good relations”, Iranian state television reported.
“Iran and Nigeria have friendly and close relations and despite the vast efforts of the two countries’ enemies in recent years relations and cooperations have always improved,” he said.
The State Security Service said on Thursday it had arrested Abdullahi Mustapha Berende and two other Nigerians in December after Berende made several suspicious trips to Iran, where he interacted with Iranians in a “high-profile terrorist network.”
It said Berende and his Iranian handlers were involved in “grievous crimes” against Nigeria’s national security.
Berende, who will now be charged in court, told reporters at the SSS headquarters on Wednesday that he had carried out surveillance for the Iranians.
In 2004, Israeli sources said an Iranian diplomat was arrested on suspicion of spying on the Israeli embassy in Nigeria’s capital Abuja. Tehran denied any arrest.
In 2010, authorities at a Lagos port found a hidden shipment of rockets, rifle rounds and other weapons from Iran, supposedly bound for Gambia. A Nigerian and an Iranian face criminal charges over the shipment.
Reuters reports that Iran accuses Israeli and Western agents of sabotaging its disputed nuclear program and assassinating several of its scientists.
Tehran has resisted Western pressure to curb its uranium enrichment activities, but is due to hold more talks on the issue with major powers in Kazakhstan on February 26.
Coalition talks are set to begin in Israel after general election results predicted right-wing and centre-left blocs tied on 60 seats each.
BBC says President Shimon Peres is expected to ask Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to attempt to form a new government.
His Likud-Beitenu alliance lost a quarter of its seats in parliament, but remains the largest grouping with 31.
He has offered to work with the newly-formed Yesh Atid party, which shocked observers by coming second with 19.
However, its leader, popular former TV presenter Yair Lapid, has demanded reform of a law under which ultra-Orthodox Jewish seminary students can defer their military service.
Religious parties in the current governing coalition are strongly opposed to any changes.
Mr. Lapid has also said he would only join a government that was committed to revive the peace process with the Palestinians, which has stalled since Mr. Netanyahu took office.
On Wednesday morning, Israeli media reported that with 99.8 per cent of votes counted, the joint electoral list of Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud party and the ultra-nationalist Yisrael Beitenu (Israel is our Home) party of his former Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman had won 31 seats.
That would be 11 seats fewer than the two parties’ combined total from the last election and below the forecasts of recent polls.
The ultra-nationalist Habayit Hayehudi (Jewish Home), which rejects the notion of an independent Palestinian state, won 11 seats, as did the ultra-Orthodox religious Shas party.
Nigerian pilgrims in Israel are well protected and safe in spite of the recent crisis between Israel and Hamas, said the Executive Secretary of the Nigeria Christian Pilgrim Commission, Mr. John-Kennedy Opara.
Opara, who said this, while briefing journalists in Abuja on Friday, insisted that the 2012 pilgrimage was on course.
The executive secretary said the NCPC had no plans to suspend the ongoing exercise, stressing that the commission was in touch with authorities in Israel and Egypt on the safety of Nigerian pilgrims.
He, however, added that the commission had suspended the movement of Nigerian pilgrims to Sinai in Egypt and other sites in the Palestinian areas.
Opara said the decision to suspend movements was based on reports received from the ground handlers in Israel and security operatives in the affected areas.
“I want to state clearly today that Nigerian pilgrims in Israel are safe; we are in constant touch with security operatives in Israel and Egypt on the situation over there.
“There is no cause for alarm, we are monitoring the situation; what we have done is to approve the suspension of movements to the Sinai area and other sites in Palestinian areas,” the News Agency of Nigeria quoted the NCPC chief as saying on Friday.
Opara assured Nigerians that the security of pilgrims in Israel was paramount to the commission and other stakeholders in the sector.
He said that the 2012 exercise would proceed as planned and that the commission would maintain its schedule for the pilgrimage.