State archive releases full Cabinet records on Entebbe raid for 50th anniversary

Israel’s State Archives, housed in the Prime Minister’s Office, has published for the first time a vast collection of material on Operation Entebbe, timed to the raid’s 50th anniversary. The archive says the release includes thousands of pages of complete minutes from cabinet meetings, the ministerial security committee, and special security consultations created by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on the day of the hijacking to handle the crisis.

Alongside newly disclosed documents, the archive has also opened all of the Entebbe-related files, some of which had already been partly public, giving the public a fuller picture of how the government handled the affair. The records show the doubts, fears, scenarios considered, and the difficult decision-making process that ultimately led to the successful rescue, including an earlier dramatic incident in Nairobi, Kenya, that was directly connected to the Entebbe case. The collection also contains a candid conversation in which Rabin asked newspaper editors to help avoid publishing details that could endanger the hostages.

The hijacking itself began when Rabin interrupted a cabinet meeting with the words, “Before we continue, I have a statement,” and told ministers that contact with the Air France flight from Israel to Paris had been lost after a stopover in Athens. “The plane was apparently hijacked,” he said. During the meeting he was told the aircraft had landed in Benghazi, Libya, though it was still unclear whether Libya was the destination, who the hijackers were, or what they intended. Rabin rejected a suggestion that ministers inform the cabinet secretary about their later plans, saying, “There is no need for that. My intention is to present the French government as responsible for the fate of the Israelis on the Air France plane, and not to release the French government from that responsibility.”

The archive says that after two days the other hostages were separated from the Israelis and a day later were freed, pushing Israel to seriously revisit options it had already considered. On Wednesday, July 1, 1976, Israel, still committed in principle not to negotiate with terrorists, announced that it was willing to enter talks, which continued almost until the last moment even as a military rescue was being prepared. The newly released material also includes 26 recorded phone calls by Eli Mizrahi, five transcripts of calls between Col. Baruch Bar-Lev and Idi Amin, an interview with hostage and rescue survivor Yitzhak David, diplomatic correspondence with France and other affected countries, United Nations Security Council discussions, hundreds of letters to Rabin after the operation, photos newly free of copyright restrictions, and later files on films and on the memorialization of Yonatan Netanyahu.