Declassified documents shed new light on Israel's 1976 Entebbe raid

Israel has declassified a tranche of previously secret documents shedding new light on the decision-making behind the 1976 Entebbe raid, one of the most celebrated hostage rescue operations in history.

The Israel State Archives released the files on Friday, days ahead of the 50th anniversary of the operation on 3 July, and at a moment when the country continues to grapple with a far more recent hostage crisis following the Hamas-led attacks of 7 October 2023, which killed around 1,200 people and saw 251 others taken to Gaza.

What happened at Entebbe?

On 27 June 1976, Palestinian and West German militants hijacked an Air France flight from Tel Aviv after it made a stopover in Athens, diverting it to Entebbe Airport in Uganda with 106 passengers on board. The hostage-takers, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and West Germany's Revolutionäre Zellen, demanded the release of prisoners held across several countries, and threatened to begin killing hostages if their deadline passed without result.

Israeli commandos flew thousands of miles across hostile airspace and stormed the airport in an operation lasting under an hour. All but three hostages were rescued. All of the hijackers were killed, along with dozens of Ugandan soldiers. The sole Israeli commando to die was Yonatan Netanyahu, brother of future Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

What do the documents reveal?

The newly released files complicate the widely held narrative of Entebbe as a clean pivot from diplomacy to military action.

According to a summary published by the Israel State Archives, then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's ad hoc crisis team initially ruled out any negotiations with the hostage-takers. But as the crisis stretched across six days and pressure from hostages' families mounted, officials gradually softened that position.

"The zero hour is approaching … We believe that a supreme effort must be made and break the ultimatum," Rabin's crisis team wrote in one internal memo, authorising negotiations over certain conditions.

In practice, Israel pursued both tracks simultaneously - backing France-led talks with Ugandan President Idi Amin while covertly preparing the rescue mission, including constructing mock-ups of the airport and staging transport planes in Kenya.

The documents suggest the decision to proceed militarily came only once negotiations appeared to stall and commanders' confidence in the operation had grown.

The wider context

The operation drew sharp international criticism at the time. Amin and the Organisation of African Unity, the predecessor to the African Union, condemned the raid as a violation of Ugandan sovereignty, particularly given Uganda's claim that it had been actively mediating.

For Israel, however, Entebbe represented a landmark success coming just four years after all nine Israeli athletes taken hostage at the 1972 Munich Olympics were killed during a German-led rescue attempt.

Yet Rabin himself was measured in his assessment. "Let us not deceive ourselves," he wrote in one of the released memos. "It was an extraordinary operation and achievement. However, the problem is not over. Terrorism continues to operate. What other problems terrorism will pose to us and what lessons we must learn from this matter, it is too early to say. We have finished one battle, but the war continues."