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6 | JULY 18 • 2024 
J
N

because Israel was prepared, 
if need be, to end the crisis by 
bowing to the hijackers’ demand 
for a prisoner release.
In his 2010 memoir The 
Prime Ministers, Yehuda Avner 
— an adviser and speechwriter 
for multiple Israeli leaders — 
provided a behind-the-scenes 
account of the crisis.
Then, as now, families of 
the hostages were demanding 
the government make a deal. 
Similarly, there were those 
opposed to any concessions, 
arguing that it would reward 
terrorism and incentivize future 
hostage-taking. According to 
Avner’s account, the debate was 
playing out at the highest levels 
of the government, between 
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin 
and his political rival, Defense 
Minister Shimon Peres.
The twist: It was Rabin, 
an architect of Israel’s daring 
military strategy almost a decade 
earlier in 1967, who argued 
in a top-level closed-door 
discussion early in the crisis 

that a deal might be the only 
option. Peres, later to emerge 
as Israel’s most prominent dove 
and champion for compromise 
with the Palestinians, “delivered 
an impassioned address on the 
implications of capitulation to 
terrorist blackmail,
” Avner wrote. 
Rabin pressed the IDF chief 
of staff, Mordechai “Motta” 
Gur, asking if Israel had a viable 
military option for saving the 
hostages. Working on it, but not 

yet, was the gist of the general’s 
reply.
The prime minister adjourned 
the meeting, but only after 
raising the possibility of 
negotiating with the terrorists. 
What the others in the room 
didn’t know is that Rabin had 
previously determined what he 
would do in such a situation. 
Later that night over a drink, 
Avner wrote, Rabin shared his 
thinking: “When it comes to 

negotiating with terrorists, I long 
ago made a decision of principle, 
well before I became prime 
minister, that if a situation were 
ever to arise when terrorists 
would be holding our people 
hostage on foreign soil and we 
were faced with an ultimatum 
either to free killers in our 
custody or let our own people be 
killed, I would, in the absence of 
a military option, give in to the 
terrorists. I would free killers to 
save our people.
”
The next day, with the 
terrorists threatening to begin 
executing hostages and still no 
military plan, Rabin informed 
a group of top ministers and 
advisers of his decision to move 
forward with negotiations. “If 
we are unable to rescue them 
by force, we have no moral 
right to abandon them,
” the 
prime minister said. “We must 
exchange them for terrorists held 
here in our jails in Israel. Our 
negotiations will be in earnest, 
not a tactical ruse to gain time. 
And we will keep our side of any 

A 1994 photograph of the old terminal with a U.S. Air Force C-130 
Hercules parked in front. Bullet holes from the 1976 raid are still 
visible.

PURELY COMMENTARY

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