[R-G] El Al to Operate Direct Flight to Brazil for First Time in a Decade

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

<http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1046857.html>
Last update - 17:01 15/12/2008  	 	 	
El Al to operate direct flight to Brazil for first time in a decade
By Zohar Blumenkrantz, Haaretz Correspondent
Tags: el al, israel news, brazil

El Al Airlines will begin operating 9 a direct flight between Tel Aviv
to Sao Paolo in spring 2009, for the first time in a decade.

The airline will also offer connecting flights to a number of
destinations in South America, including Argentina, Chile, Bolivia,
Ecuador and other cities in Brazil.

The flight from Tel Aviv to Sao Paolo takes about 14-and-a-half-hours.
El Al plans to operate the flight on a Boeing 777, three or four times
a week.

The airline will finalize its plans - including flight schedules and
fares - over the coming month, pending approval from all the necessary
networks.

El Al CEO Haim Romano said the new operations would boost the already
rising phenomenon of Israeli tourism in South America, as well as
serve the large Jewish communities on the continent.

"Trade between Israel and South America is one the rise, Israeli
tourism to South America is blooming and there are large Jewish
communities there," he said, but added: "Investing in a flight line
like this, for the first time in ten years, undoubtedly presents El Al
with a litany of operational, service and marketing challenges."

Israel last year signed a free-trade pact with Mercosur, the South
American trade bloc. It was the bloc's first such pact with a country
outside of Latin America.

The deal followed two years of negotiations to bolster trade ties
between South American countries and Israel.

<http://www.webnewswire.com/node/446824>
15 December 2008
	
General Assembly
GA/PAL/1108
Department of Public Information • News and Media Division • New York

UN LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN MEETING ON ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN PEACE PROCESS

CALLS FOR HALTING SETTLEMENT EXPANSION, DISMANTLING OF WALL IN WEST BANK

(Received from a UN Information Officer.)

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

ARLENE CLEMESHA, Professor of Arab Culture of the University of São
Paulo and member of the Institute for Arab Culture in Brazil, stated
that Latin America and the Caribbean had been incapable of converting
their verbal support to the Palestinian cause in concrete and
effective actions.

Latin American nations continued to sign free trade agreements with
Israel and purchase weapons and advanced technology from Israel, and
their universities established cooperation agreements with Israel and
were proud of the academic and intellectual exchange with Israel, she
remarked.  In most cases, she added, none of that was based on the
intentions of Governments in the region, but rather under corporate
pressure.  She said Brazil was importing state-of-the-art technology,
communications and security equipment developed by Israel to feed its
own war industry against the Palestinian people.