Lieutenant General Mordechai Gur, was also reluctant to recom-
mend a military rescue operation unless relevant and updated intel-
ligence was gathered.
The only information at hand was about the terminal at Entebbe Air-
port; this was obtained from the Israeli construction firm Solel Boneh,
which had constructed the building in the 1960s. In that decade and the
next, it had been very common for Israeli firms to be involved in build-
ing projects in Africa. Solel Boneh still had the blueprint of the termi-
nal and sent it to the Israeli government at once. But this intelligence
was insufficient. The Israeli government decided speedily to collect
relevant and updated intelligence for a rescue operation. At the request
of the Israeli government, the CGS assigned to Colonel Ehud Barak,
assistant for operations to the director of Military Intelligence(DMI),
the mission of assembling this intelligence.
While planning the military rescue operation, the Israeli government
stated its readiness to pursue several political paths for the release of the
hostages. This move was merely a ploy to gain time for acquiring more
intelligence on the situation and planning the rescue operation. Major
General Rehavam Ze’evi, then the special adviser on intelligence to
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, was dispatched to Paris with a list of ter-
rorists that Israel said it might be ready to release. Ze’evi was to man-
age negotiations with the terrorists through French mediation. As the ne-
gotiations proceeded, the hijackers extended the ultimatum to 4 July.
The hijacked passengers were held in the old terminal’s transit
hall. The terrorists subsequently freed a large number of them, keep-
ing only Israelis and Jews, whom they threatened to kill if the Israeli
government did not comply with their demand to release Palestinian
prisoners. The released passengers would fly out on a different Air
France plane that was sent to Entebbe for that purpose.
The hijackers said they would free the airplane’s crew, too. How-
ever, Michel Bacos, the captain of flight 139, told the hijackers that
all passengers, including those still held, were his responsibility; he
would not leave them behind. His entire crew, down to the most jun-
ior flight attendant, stayed with him of their own free will. In total,
103 Israeli hostages (men, women, and children) and French crew
members remained in Entebbe airport.
Following the release of the non-Israeli and non-Jewish hostages,
Lieutenant Colonel Amiram Levine, a reserve officer in the Collec-318 • YEHONATHAN OPERATION06-102 (04) Q-Z.qxd 3/24/06 7:26 AM Page 318