Emirates Airline to serve, create kosher meals in house

Emirates Airline will now be providing kosher meals on its flights, according to Agence France Presse (AFP).The airline released its plans to add kosher meals to its menu on Thursday, making its own kosher meals available to keep in line with Jewish dietary restrictions after the countries signed an agreement normalizing ties on Tuesday.Emirates' catering service had been offering kosher meals to its passengers prior to this announcement. They were outsourced, however, whereas now the meals will be made in house and the airline will "set up a dedicated production facility" that will be operational by January 2021."With recent developments, we expect that demand for kosher food in the UAE and region will grow quickly," Emirates Flight Catering (EKFC) CEO Saeed Mohammed said in a statement. "We will also explore opening restaurants across Dubai and the [Gulf Cooperation Council]."The new facility will welcome a partnership with CCL Holdings, to which it has named "Kosher Arabia," EKFC said in a statement.Marking the "dawn of a new Middle East," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed on Tuesday historic and groundbreaking normalization agreements with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, the third and fourth ever between Israel and Arab states.The two Gulf States become only the third and fourth countries in the Middle East to recognize Israel and establish formal diplomatic relations with the Jewish state since Egypt did so in 1979 and Jordan in 1994, drastically re-drawing the political map in the region.

Lahav Harkov contributed to this report.