On Thursday, July 1, 1976, as Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin sat in Tel Aviv with a close circle of advisers, the IDF chief of staff approached him with some bad news.

“There’s no denying it,” Motta Gur said. “The IDF isn’t really built for operations in Entebbe.”

It was the middle of the afternoon, four days after the government had received word that an Air France plane, en route from Tel Aviv to Paris via Athens, had been hijacked and eventually taken to Entebbe Airport in Uganda. More than 240 passengers were on the flight, 83 of them Israeli. The crisis had consumed the government in the time since; this was the sixth meeting of that day alone, and there would be two more after it.

Rabin snapped at Gur — but not to contradict him.

“Is someone complaining?” said the prime minister, himself a former IDF chief of staff. Earlier, he had compared the idea of a rescue mission to the Bay of Pigs, the failed US-backed attempt 15 years earlier to overthrow the Cuban government.

He added, “I’m not complaining, and think we have no operational ability there, operational ability to free the hostages.”

Some 48 hours later, four Israeli Hercules jets would take off from Sharm al-Sheikh, launching the rescue mission that would free the hostages and quickly become the stuff of Israeli legend.

What changed? Fifty years after the July 4, 1976, surprise operation at Entebbe, a new trove of documents from the State Archive in the Prime Minister’s Office has revealed the minutes of the many government meetings held during the fateful weeklong crisis.

Also included are diplomatic cables, photos and handwritten notes covering everything from Israel’s attempts to sway Ugandan dictator Idi Amin to a subject that may feel more familiar to the Israel of today: Attempts by the families of hostages to convince the government to cut a deal that would save their loved ones’ lives.

Rabin and his close circle of advisers changed tacks in real time, with the lives of dozens of their citizens in the balance

Rabin and his close circle of advisers changed tacks in real time, with the lives of dozens of their citizens in the balance

The documents tell a story not of an Israeli government that secretly planned, all along, to stage a dramatic rescue under the ruse of negotiating. Rather, Rabin and his close circle of advisers — a group that would later become known as the security cabinet — changed tacks in real time, with the lives of dozens of their citizens in the balance.

They first hoped for international assistance. When that wasn’t forthcoming, they ambivalently, reluctantly, opted for negotiations with the terrorist hijackers, all the while trying to flatter Amin and prevent leaks to the press.

Only days later did a risky, secret military operation become possible.

“I do not propose this lightly,” Defense Minister Shimon Peres said at a cabinet meeting on July 3, as the government was deciding to send commandos to Uganda. “This is an operation that the IDF has not experienced. This is the first operation in Israel’s history outside the borders of the Middle East.”

Then, he added, “When comparing both risks and results, we have reached a conclusion.”

‘I intend to hold the French government responsible’

Rabin got the news of the plane’s hijacking, after a stopover in Athens, in the middle of his weekly Sunday cabinet meeting on June 27, and immediately informed those in the room.

“It’s apparently hijacked, apparently flying toward Benghazi,” Rabin said of the jet. “Everything is still a matter of speculation. I want to stress that [security] checking of passengers in Israel is serious, but in Athens it’s less serious.”

Shortly afterward, while still in the meeting, Rabin........

© The Times of Israel