Newly Released Cabinet Minutes Reveal Israel’s Hidden Deliberations Before the Entebbe Raid

Fifty years after the Entebbe hostage crisis, Israel’s State Archives has released for the first time the classified minutes of cabinet, ministerial, and security meetings that led to Operation Entebbe. The documents show a tense and uncertain decision-making process on Saturday, July 3, 1976, when ministers met in emergency session to decide whether to approve the IDF rescue mission in Uganda or yield to the hijackers’ demands.

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin opened the meeting by saying he had convened it “in the middle of Shabbat” to present “a heavy matter for decision.” He defended the earlier choice to pursue negotiations, saying there had been “no military alternative” that could have been carried out in the available time, but added that further intelligence had made a military option possible. Rabin also told ministers he supported the raid despite expecting casualties, recalling the painful lessons of the Maalot massacre and the Savoy Hotel attack, and warning that the public and hostage families could erupt in protest if people were killed.

Defense Minister Shimon Peres argued that surrendering would cripple the world’s ability to fight terrorism and said this would be Israel’s first operation beyond the Middle East. IDF Chief of Staff Mordechai “Motta” Gur laid out the operational plan, including four Hercules aircraft, a landing on the Entebbe runway, a takeover of the terminal, and a backup refueling plan in Nairobi, where three surgical teams would also wait for wounded personnel. Gur compared the uncertainties to earlier attacks in Beit She’an and Nahariya.

Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Yigal Allon backed the operation and warned against perceptions that the state valued some victims more than others. Former Eichmann prosecutor Gideon Hausner linked the crisis to the Holocaust, noting that three of the hijackers were German. Military intelligence chief Shlomo Gazit described a Holocaust survivor at the terminal who panicked at the sight of a hijacker. Rabin then quipped, “I prefer this heir to the Nazis.”

In the end, the ministers approved the raid. Rabin stressed that success depended on total secrecy, telling ministers they should deny even holding the meeting if asked. He said, “It is justified not to tell the truth in such a case,” because any leak could ruin the element of surprise, which he called the difference “between catastrophe and success.”