Coastal Highway Attack

On November 19, 1977, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat paid a visit to Jerusalem . Speaking to the Israeli parliamentarians , he announced Egypt’s readiness for peace with Israel. The following month, in Tripoli, at a joint meeting, the leaders of Libya , Syria , Algeria and the People’s Democratic Republic , as well as the PLO, announced the creation of a single National Front of Resilience and Opposition, aimed at combating the Egyptian peace initiative. ^[2] (unavailable link) Time Magazine associates the revitalization of terrorist activity in the following months with the desire to disrupt the conclusion of peace. ^[one]

The organizers of the action gave it the name “ Kamal Aduan ”, in honor of the leader of the organization “ Black September ”, who was killed by the Israelis in Beirut in April 1973 ^[3] . The terrorists were armed with Kalashnikovs , hand grenades, RPGs and explosives. The purpose of the raid, according to the testimony of surviving members of the squad at the trial, was to seize a hotel in Tel Aviv, similar to the seizure of the Savoy Hotel three years earlier ^{[4] [5]} . Then Palestinian militants seized a hotel in Tel Aviv and demanded the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons in exchange for hostages. During the seizure of the hotel and its subsequent assault by Israeli special forces, eight hostages, seven militants and three Israeli soldiers were killed; five hostages were released ^[6] . Time magazine also puts forward a version according to which the goal of the al-Mugrabi raid was to disrupt the Israeli-Egyptian peace talks ^[1] .

Contrary to the original plan, the militants mistakenly landed from inflatable boats on the coast of Israel not near Tel Aviv, but near the kibbutz Maagan-Michael near Zikhron Yaakov . In the process of disembarking from the uterus ship in a stormy sea far from the coast, two of the thirteen terrorists died. ^[6]

On the shore, the terrorists met landscape photographer Gail Rubin, a U.S. citizen who was conducting field surveys. Having learned from Rubin where they are, the terrorists killed her. One of the two surviving so far members of the squad, Hussein Fayyad, recalls:

Sister Dalal al-Mugrabi spoke with an American journalist [Gail Rubin]. Before killing her, Dalal asked: “How did you get to Palestine?” [Rubin] replied: “They gave me a visa.” Dalal asked: “Have you been given a visa by me or Israel? I have the rights to this land. Why didn’t you turn to me? ”Then Dalal opened fire on her.

Original text

Sister Dalal Al-Maghrabi had a conversation with the American journalist [Gail Rubin]. Before killing her, Dalal asked: "How did you enter Palestine?" [Rubin] answered: "They gave me a visa." Dalal said: "Did you get your visa from me, or from Israel? I have the right to this land. Why didn't you come to me?" Then Dalal opened fire on her.

^[7]

Another surviving militant explains the murder of Gail Rubin by the fact that the militants were afraid that she would report them, and that they “did not know that she was not Israeli.” ^[8]

Time magazine sets forth further events as follows: having got out on the highway, the militants stopped a fixed-route taxi whose passengers were killed and headed on it towards Tel Aviv. Opening fire on the oncoming passenger bus, they forced him to stop. On a bus with hostages, the militants continued moving towards Tel Aviv. Another bus was soon stopped, its passengers were also transferred to the first; In total, over 70 hostages were collected on the bus. Witnesses and surviving passengers say that automatic fire was fired from the bus and grenades were thrown into oncoming cars. Several passengers in the bus itself were shot, and at least one body was thrown out. A young American, traveling from Tel Aviv to Haifa, said that someone had shot a car from a bus that had stopped, where his father and brother were also located; both of them died on the way to the hospital. ^[one]

The Israeli police, who received information about the hijacked bus, tried in vain to stop him. One such attempt near Hadera ended in the death of an Israeli police officer in a shootout. ^[5] Finally, it was possible to stop the bus with the help of a barrier with nails in the area of Herzliya . Some sources claim that in the absence of anti-terrorist units, which did not have time to tighten up, the traffic police formed the basis of the capture group. ^{[4] [9]} Other modern sources claim that army special forces led by Ehud Barak ^[10] participated in the release of the hostages (this statement, which appeared in the media in recent years, is not confirmed by Barak’s official biography ^[11] or encyclopedic articles about him, reporting that at that time he was finishing second degree at Stanford and holding the post of commander of a tank battalion in reserve ^{[12] [13] [14]} ). In the ensuing skirmish, some of the hostages apparently died from the fire of Israeli forces. At the same time, some of the terrorists, according to the testimony of passenger Abraham Shamir, were apparently killed by passengers who managed to take possession of their weapons in a shootout. Terrorists also shot at passengers trying to get out of the bus. ^[1] During the shootout, the back of the bus was engulfed in fire, possibly undermined by terrorists, ^{[15] [16]} each of which had an explosive belt. ^[4] As a result of the shootout and previous actions of the militants, 39 Israelis were killed, including 13 children, more than 70 were injured. ^{[17] [18]} 9 terrorists were also killed, including al-Mugrabi herself, and two more militants were captured alive.

• Ravital (Tali) Aaronovich ^[19] , 14 years old
• Naomi Elihai ^{[15] [20]} , 17-18 years old
• Erez Alfred ^[21] , 5 years old
• Yitzhak Alfred ^[22] , 44 years old
• Galit Ankva ^[23] , 2 years
• Yitzhak (Itzik) Ankva ^[24] , 10 years
• Haviv Ankva ^[25] , 38 years old
• Matilda (Mati) Ashkenazi-Daniel ^[26] , 68 years old
• Yehuda Basterman ^[27] , 32 years old
• Rina Bushkenich ^[28] , 34 years old
• Dov Bushkenich ^[29] , 36 years old
• Liat Gal-On ^[30] , 6 years old
• Shimon Glotman ^[31] , 43 years old
• Amnon Drori ^[32] , 43 years old
• Naama Hadani ^{[15] [33]} , 5 years
• Ilan Hochman ^[34] , 3 years
• Roy Hochman ^[35] , 6 years old
• Rivka Hochman ^[36] , 28 years old
• Mordechai (Moti) Zith ^[37] , 9 years old
• Yosef Heloani ^[38] , 66 years old
• Zion Lozia-Cohen ^[39] , 32 years old
• Abraham Lozia ^[40] , 37 years old
• Malka Leibovich-Weiss ^[41] , 58 years old
• Otari Mansurov ^[42] , 37 years old
• Yoav (Yoavi) Meshkel ^[43] , 6 years
• Meir Segal ^[44] , 73 years old
• Kati (Rina) Sosenskaya ^{[15] [45]} , 49 years old
• Yosef Sosensky ^{[15] [46]} , 56 years old
• Zvi (Zwika) Eshet ^[47] , 46 years old
• Tuvia Rosner ^{[15] [48]} , 53 years old
• Gail Rubin ^{[15] [49]} , 39–40 years old
• Omri Tel-Oren ^{[15] [50] [51]} , 14 years old

On March 13, at a special meeting of the Knesset, a resolution was passed condemning the attack on the Coastal Highway and calling on all free countries to join the condemnation. The resolution expressed condolences to the relatives of the victims and the belief that the actions of terrorists will not interfere with peacekeeping efforts in the Middle East. The resolution stated that the fight against terrorist organizations would be waged until they were destroyed. ^[52] Two days later, the large-scale Operation Litani began in Lebanon, during which the entire south of the country, with the exception of the city of Tire , came under the control of the Israel Defense Forces .

During the operation, more than 2,000 people from the Palestinian-Lebanese side were killed and about 285,000, according to the Lebanese government, left their homes. ^[53]

The UN Security Council , which had not previously responded to the attack on the Coastal Highway, adopted resolution No. 425 on March 19, requiring the immediate withdrawal of Israeli troops from Lebanon and the deployment of international troops there in order to restore Lebanese sovereignty over the south of the country. UN troops in one form or another remained in Lebanon from that moment to the present. ^[54]

The two surviving raid members, Hussein Fayyad and Khaled Abu Isba, spent seven years in prison in Israel, after which they were released as part of a prisoner exchange deal with PFLP Ahmad Djibril . ^[8] In 2009, Abu Isba was elected a member of the Fatah Revolutionary Council at the Sixth Congress of this organization. ^[55] In interviews in 2008 and 2009, he denies the involvement of militants in the killing of hostages and blames their death entirely on Israeli fire. He accuses Ehud Barak of the death of the Israelis and his comrades, who, in his opinion, commanded the hostage release operation. Abu Isba urged the families of the dead Israelis to file a lawsuit against the Israeli government and Ehud Barak and expressed a desire to speak at such a court and testify that Barak is a criminal and a murderer. ^{[7] [8]}

In 2008, Israel agreed to transfer the remains of al-Mugrabi to the Lebanese Hezbollah organization along with a number of other bodies and living militants of Arab organizations in exchange for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers captured by Hezbollah two years before. It was stipulated that the body of al-Mugrabi would be buried in Lebanon, and not in the Palestinian Authority . Subsequently, reports appeared in the press that the remains of al-Mugrabi were lost and were not transferred to Hezbollah. According to the Israeli side, the bodies of al-Mugrabi and some other militants were impossible to find, as they were "carried away by the underground current." ^[56]

Dalal al-Mugrabi was posthumously awarded the highest Palestinian award, the Medal of Honor of the Martyrdom ( Eng. Martyrdom Medal of Honor ). ^[5] In the Palestinian Authority , a street, schools for girls, summer camps for children, military and police schools are named after al-Mugrabi. ^{[15] [57] The} terrorist act committed by her and her accomplices is glorified in the press of the Arab countries. In his essay on Mugrabi, the Syrian poet Nizar Kabbani calls her participation in the raid “a true manifestation of motherhood”, then he conducts an allegory between the captured bus and the “provisional capital of the Palestinian state,” and also calls Mugrabi the interim president of this state.

The Arab newspaper Gulf News , in its 2008 publication , claims that all the hostages captured by the group were Israeli soldiers, echoing Fatah’s claims in 1978 that at least 33 Israeli soldiers were killed ^[51] , which is not confirmed by the list of victims of the attack.

In Herzliya, at the Glylot transport junction , a monument to the victims of the coastal highway massacre was erected.

• 32nd anniversary of the coastal massacre