How Idi Amin Turned Against Israel Ahead of the Entebbe Rescue

Ahead of the 50th anniversary of Operation Entebbe, the State Archives on Friday released thousands of pages of protocols, call transcripts and documents about the daring rescue in Uganda, in which more than 100 Israeli hostages were freed. The files show what Israeli leaders knew when, beginning on Sunday, June 27, 1976, when Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was told during the weekly cabinet meeting that an Air France flight from Tel Aviv to Paris, Flight 139, had been hijacked.

The background to the crisis was Uganda's sharp break with Israel. Uganda severed relations in March 1972, and ruler Idi Amin became one of the most prominent supporters of the Palestinian struggle. Israel had once maintained close ties with Uganda, including agricultural and industrial training for Ugandan students and Israeli help in building Uganda's air force and flight school. Amin had visited Israel twice, first as army chief and again in 1971 after seizing power and becoming a dictator.

By 1972, however, Amin had turned against Israel and the United States, embraced support from Libya's Muammar Gaddafi and the Soviet Union, and openly backed the Palestinian cause. A Foreign Ministry report from August 1976 summarized his many hostile statements and actions after the rupture. During the hijacking, Amin moved among the hostages and spoke with them, while telling Israel that he could not intervene because the terrorists had surrounded the hostages with explosives and threatened to detonate everything if any plane approached Uganda. The report says that claim was false, and that Ugandan soldiers guarded the hostages and helped the hijackers, who also had weapons they had not possessed on the plane.

Israel tried to pressure Amin through diplomatic channels, including African leaders and governments in France, Britain and the United States, and also through the pope and other influential figures. Amin later claimed credit for agreeing to postpone the ultimatum to July 4 to allow more time for talks, while the IDF prepared the rescue operation. After the raid, Amin said on Radio Uganda that 20 Ugandan soldiers had been killed and that about 100 hostages had been freed at Entebbe Airport, calling for worldwide condemnation of Israel and urging action at the UN Security Council, the Arab League, the Non-Aligned Movement summit and the Organization of African Unity.