Haddad's operation on Skyjack Sunday was a triumph. Although the Israelis thwarted the seizure of El Al flight 219, the PFLP commandeered three jets, destroyed one, and held two others in Jordan with nearly three hundred hostages. Flush with bravado, the PFLP explained that it had hijacked the jets to manifest its abhorrence of the August cease-fire agreement Egypt and Jordan conceded to Israel and the United States. The PFLP seized the Pan Am and TWA flights—symbols of American global presence—to punish the United States for its support of Israel; it went after the El Al flight simply because the Palestinians were at war with Israel. Haddad's commandos had more pragmatic reasons for hijacking Swiss Air 100: the release of the three fedayeen serving twelve-year prison sentences for the February 1969 attack on an El Al jet in Zurich. Because Germans were aboard the flight, the PFLP demanded the release of three more Palestinians imprisoned for the September 1969 attack on an El Al office in Munich. And it reiterated its demand for the release of Sirhan Sirhan, the assassin of Robert Kennedy. Once Leila Khaled fell into British hands, the PFLP also demanded her release and the body of her fallen comrade. This was just the opening round of demands. The PFLP would reveal its specific demands for the release of fedayeen imprisoned in Israel only after the terrorists in England, Switzerland, and West Germany went free.
The PFLP's position was formidable. It held two multimillion-dollar aircraft and more than three hundred hostages of many nationalities. PFLP spokesmen threatened to destroy the jets—although not to kill the hostages—in seventy-two hours, at 10 p.m. New York time, on Wednesday, 9 September. The hostages sat confined to their seats in the sweltering desert heat. PFLP guerrillas encircled Dawson Field; the Jordanian army encircled the PFLP. It was a dangerous confrontation, but the Jordanian army was powerless to rescue the hostages without endangering their lives. On Monday, the PFLP released more than half the hostages, mostly women and children who could not tolerate the conditions. They were free but not safe. They made the overland journey to the capital in a country descending into civil war; in Amman, fierce fighting in the streets forced them to take shelter in the basement of the hotel where the Jordanians had put them up. But the terrorists still held more than 150 Israeli, American, British, West German, and Swiss nationals. The crisis was just beginning.
President Nixon was relaxing at his house in San Clemente for Labor Day weekend when the PFLP seized the airliners. Terrorists were holding an unknown number of Americans hostage and threatening the destruction of the aircraft within seventy-two hours, yet the president's thinking ran to geostrategic considerations. Nixon recorded in his memoir that after the hijackings “it seemed likely that a serious showdown was going to be unavoidable.” Kissinger, the national security advisor, was of a like mind. As Kissinger saw things, the United States “faced two problems, the safety of the hostages and the future of Jordan.” But the future of Jordan mattered most to him: the survival of the man Kissinger patronizingly called the “tough little king” was a strategic imperative. Here the United States had options.23 Nixon ordered U.S. naval forces in the Mediterranean to move into striking distance of Jordan to deter Syrian and Iraqi intervention in defense of the Palestinian fedayeen, and he discreetly indicated that the United States would favor an Israeli attack to save Jordan and crush the Palestinians. The threat of a U.S. and Israeli attack could at least buttress King Hussein. But the United States could not guarantee the safety of the hostages—the Pentagon advised that it could not organize a rescue operation—and the president and his national security advisor refused to bargain for their lives. “Israel had a policy of never yielding to blackmail,” Kissinger wrote later; “our own view was roughly the same.” The reality was that Israel's policy was not that rigid; Israel made “humanitarian gestures” after the release of Israeli hostages in 1968 and again in 1969. The Nixon administration's fidelity to a doctrine would be challenged again—with dire consequences—before Nixon left office. The Swiss and the West Germans, however, saw no wisdom in risking innocent lives in defense of an abstract principle. The Swiss immediately announced their intention to comply with the demand for the release of the three fedayeen held in Swiss custody, and the West Germans gave assurances they would trade Palestinian terrorists for West German tourists a few days after the Swiss announcement. But both governments refused to release the Palestinians until all the hostages were released, regardless of nationality. No one was certain about the position of British prime minister Edward Heath. Haddad knew how to influence his thinking.
British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) flight 755 departed Bombay en route to London on 9 September with 117 passengers and crew. The flight was scheduled to make stopovers in Bahrain and Beirut before proceeding to London. The BOAC jet never arrived in London. PFLP terrorists boarded it in Bahrain and commandeered it during its final approach to Beirut. It was the second time in three days that a hijacked jetliner approached the airport in the Lebanese capital. To heighten the drama, the terrorists ordered the pilot to circle the city for a full hour before putting down to refuel. By the time the plane landed, both the British ambassador and the Lebanese transportation minister were on the radio urging the terrorists to release the women and children aboard the jet. This the terrorists were not willing to consider: “We are leaving with everybody” they warned “or we are blowing up the airplane with everybody.” It was the first—and last—explicit threat to the passengers. After refueling in Beirut, the plane made the short journey to Dawson Field outside Amman. The pilot, a twenty-two-year veteran, remembers one of the terrorists pondering aloud as he took off for Jordan: “Let's see what Heath does now.”24
The United States, Switzerland, West Germany, and Britain were already negotiating through the International Committee of the Red Cross when the third jet arrived in Jordan with 117 more hostages. The passengers aboard BOAC flight 755 brought the number of hostages back up to nearly 300. A Red Cross mediator convinced the PFLP to push back its original deadline by another seventy-two hours, but even the Red Cross was confused about the exact time those hours expired. The guerrillas surrounding the jets began to ease the restrictions on the hostages. The flight crews spoke at news conferences, small groups of hostages walked around the jets, photographers photographed them, and journalists spoke with them. It was an international media spectacle Haddad would never again achieve. But conditions on the jets were horrendous. Food was scanty, the heat was intolerable, toilets overflowed. On Thursday, the fifth day of the ordeal for the TWA and Swiss Air passengers, an American passenger gave birth to another hostage. The terrorists did not overtly threaten the hostages—a PFLP spokesman threatened to destroy the planes, but did not repeat the threat uttered in Beirut to blow up the planes with the hostages aboard them—but the tension was palpable.
Israel's position was critical, because even after the Swiss, West Germans, and British announced the fedayeen would go free, the fate of the remaining hostages depended on Golda Meir, who had become prime minister when Levi Eshkol was struck down by a heart attack in 1969. Meier would confront the taking and killing of hostages throughout her term in office. On 11 September, the PFLP released 88 hostages, moved another 23 to hotels in Amman, and offered to free all women and children for the release of the seven fedayeen in Switzerland, West Germany, and England. The same day, Israel made vague statements about an agreement “in principle” to make an exchange. The hostage crisis outside of Amman appeared to be moving toward resolution, but appearances were deceiving. The Palestinians, alarmed by the menacing deployments of Israeli and U.S. forces, and engaged in intensifying combat with Jordanian troops, decided to act. On 12 September, the PFLP released all but 54 of the hostages. But then, thirteen hours before the deadline, the guerrillas destroyed the empty jets one by one as news photographers captured some of the most dramatic images in the history of terrorism in the media age. The world would not see anything like this until 9/11.
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