Air security: rest of world needs to learn from El Al

From racial profiling to anti-missile shields: the measures Brown should be introducing

El Al airliner

In the wake of the international panic caused by the Detroit underpants bomber on Christmas Day, Gordon Brown has come out with a range of new security measures. A 'no-fly' list is to be established, all flights between Britain and Yemen are cancelled forthwith, and terrorist movements will be "seamlessly tracked and disrupted". Finally, the introduction of full body scanners will begin at British airports next week.These measures will no doubt lessen the risk. But do they go far enough?

Potential airline passengers might like to know which national airline was recently named by the magazine Global Traveler as the world's most secure; which airline is so confident of the security procedures at its main hub airport that it still permits passengers to board with bottles and tubes of liquid brought from home; and which airline uses racial profiling. The answer of course is El Al, the Hebrew phrase meaning 'To The Skies', which flew its inaugural flight in September 1948 and since the 1972 massacre at Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv in which 26 people were murdered, has suffered no successful attacks. Almost all attempts which did take place were carried out on foreign soil (the 1976 Entebbe hijacking was the work of terrorists who boarded the El Al plane with their weapons during a stopover in Athens.) As a non-Jew who flew it regularly during the 11 years I was based in Jerusalem as a foreign correspondent, I can vouch that this record is all the more impressive ­ and all the more in need of copying by less rigorously guarded airlines in Europe, America and Asia ­ because it is the most theoretically juicy target for Arab and Muslim terrorists anywhere on the globe. Yet, such is the effectiveness of its various deterrents ­ seen and unseen ­ that the actual attempts against its fleet of nearly 40 aircraft on nearly 50 cargo and passenger routes are minimal. In addition to its shameless pro-Jewish racial profiling, which involves widely different treatment for different types of passenger and individual questioning of passengers by Israeli staff (often women) trained in psychological techniques and unafraid to ask the most intrusive details of the passenger's recent movements and intentions, there are also many less obvious precautions that are constantly being modified. Up-to-the-minute specifications of the types of weapons and explosives likely to be employed by suicide bombers and other terrorists is provided by the Israel Defence Force's secretive substance laboratory based in a nondescript cluster of prefabricated huts at the Tel Hashomer army base near Tel Aviv. In addition, all El Al terminals around the world are patrolled by plain-clothes agents and fully armed police or military personnel who check for explosives, suspicious behaviour and other threats. No ticket without a sticker from the security interrogators will be accepted ­ and particular note is taken of how and where it was purchased. At passport control, passengers' names are checked against information from the FBI, Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Scotland Yard, Shin Bet, Interpol and French Deuxieme Bureau data bases. All bags are routinely put through a decompression chamber simulating pressure once airborne that could trigger explosives. Once on board, every El Al flight contains at least two, and often more plain-clothes, armed sky marshals, who sit randomly among the passengers.

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is a former Middle East, Moscow and Ireland correspondent for the Times. Now based in London, he is a foreign affairs commentator for Sky News and Al Jazeera English, and London correspondent of Global Radio News. He writes regular Middle East commentaries for the emerging markets wire, Noozz.Com.