From Tel Aviv to Riyadh

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — “Your final destination is Tel Aviv?”

I’ve been a reporter in the Middle East since 1979, and those are six words I’d never heard in the place where I was standing about the place where I was going.

I was checking in to fly from Doha, Qatar, to Tel Aviv, via Dubai. It was a once inconceivable connection, and now it tripped off the tongue of the FlyDubai agent at Doha International Airport with the same nonchalance as if she were asking if I was flying to Cairo via Riyadh.