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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
continued from page 4