Welcome to a new part of the episodes of important historical events in Algeria’s history.
Five years after Algeria’s independence, it had direct entry into the Arab-Israeli conflict in the 1967 war, in which Algeria sent a land army and aircraft in the first row on the Egyptian front. After exactly a year’s war on 22 July 1968 an Israeli Boeing 707 aircraft took off the flight 426 from Rome airport towards the Lod airport in the Occupied Palestinian Territory with 38 passengers and 10 crew members aboard. After 20 minutes of flight, one of the passengers, who was Palestinian, pulled a gun out of his pocket, then proceeded to the cockpit and told the pilot to consider your aircraft hijacked. When the pilots tried to fight with him and dismantle the gun from his hand, he revealed a grenade to them and then called out to two of his friends who were among the passengers to join him and who were also armed. According to the Israeli pilot, he told his colleague that the plane would rise to the highest range and then reduce the air pressure from inside the plane so that all the passengers would be unconscious while the pilots used an oxygen mask, But he was afraid to risk and bow to the hijackers, and an hour after flying the Israeli plane landed at Algiers airport. “After disembarking, the hijackers requested that they meet with Algerian officials, who asked them to stand on their side in this case and to free the hostages only by freeing Arab prisoners from Egyptian, Jordanian and Palestinian prisons of occupation, With the Sunrise, all hostages were released from other nationalities other than Israel. All Israeli children and women were sent to the Swiss capital and the kidnappers retained Algeria’s consent to 12 Israelis. In the same vein, Algeria announced through foreign media that it would not abandon the kidnappers and that it would not extradite the kidnapped under any circumstances. The kidnappers demanded the liberation of more than 30 Arab prisoners in occupation prisons and said that if the occupying power handed them over to the Red Cross, their prisoners would leave Algeria.
The Israelis rushed to British, French and American mediation, but Algerian opinion remained firm and the kidnappers’ demands were legitimate and must be negotiated with them.
On the third day of the kidnapping, Moshe Diane discussed with his ministers a flash air attack at Algiers airport, but France warned them of the seriousness of the act and promised them that it would work more in the way of mediation and peaceful resolution. For its part, America intervened to pressure the Civil Aviation Authority to ban and isolate all flights from and to Algeria as a province on charges of encouraging the hijacking of aircraft. At the time, Algeria was trapped with the exception of some diplomatic aircraft carrying the foreign ministers of European countries to propose their mediators for a solution.
40 days after the abduction, the aforementioned prisoners were already freed and handed over to Algeria. The hostages and the Israeli aircraft were handed over to a French crew specially provided for their transportation. The Algerian authority then stipulated that the aircraft should not fly directly to Tel Aviv but should return to the airport from which it came.
The kidnappers remained anonymous because they had boarded from Rome airport with forged passports. In Algeria, they were given complete confidentiality of their names and photographs. Algerian identities were given from Algeria. Their names will only be found in Algeria’s secret archive of this case, which has several advantages, including:
First, it is the longest hijacking of an aircraft in history for 40 days, secondly, because it is the first Israeli aircraft to be hijacked. Thirdly, it is the first time that Israel has agreed to the terms of a hostage-taking operation and met all their demands.
This was a quick piece of information that we hope will add to your historical information.
