The official commemorative website for the late Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Netanyahu can be found attwww.yoni.org.il.
The following is a very moving and accurate account, of what took place on the days leading up to, and including 04 July '76, the rescue at Entebbe, now known as Operation Yonatan.
Excerpted from the “Afterword” of The Letters of Jonathan Netanyahu by Ma'ariv Publication
In the early part of the critical week beginning Sunday June 27, Yoni was engaged in a military operation which is still to this day classified, shuttling twice from Sinai to central Israel. Early Monday morning he spent a few hours with his troops at Lod airport. A hijacked Air France plane, with scores of Israelis on board, had just taken off from Libya after a brief stopover there, and it was not known whether the hijackers might land the plane in Israel.
The plane, however, did not proceed to Israel but turned southeast, in the direction of East Africa, and landed that morning at Entebbe airport in Uganda.There, the four terrorists who had hijacked the plane, two Germans and two Arabs, were met by several other Arab terrorists. The hostages were taken to the airport’s old terminal building.There they were held under guard by the army of Uganda, whose head, the notorious Idid Amin, colluded with the Arab terrorist organizations. The terrorists demanded the release from jail of over fifty of their colleagues, most of whom were behind bars in Israel, a few in other countries. The deadline for their release was set for Thursday afternoon. Israel was warned that if by that date the jailed terrorists were not released, the hostages would be killed.
Late Tuesday and Wednesday, some low-key discussions took place among Israeli army strategists about the possibility of rescuing the hostages. Yoni was kept informed of these discussions, although he was still tied up with other operations of his Unit (the Sayeret Matkal). For the time being, the discussions led nowhere. But on Wednesday night Yoni received word that the talks seemed to have taken on a more meaningful tone.
“On Wednesday evening the phone calls began to come in,” recalls Avi, the Unit’s head of intelligence, who was with Yoni in Sinai, “informing us that a directive had been issued for the Unit to start planing [a rescue operation]. During the night there were quite a few calls…mostly from Muki [an officer of the Unit who was to be Yoni’s number-two man in the raid]. Muki was pressing us to return to Israel, because he was repeatedly asked: ‘When can Yoni get here?’…With every phone call you said to yourself, ‘Maybe there’s a chance that something will happen after all.’ The pressure was pretty serious, and we understood that by the next day, first thing, we’d have to fly back.”
Yoni did indeed fly north on Thursday once he could manage it, probably late in the morning. That morning, however, with the ultimatum nearing its deadline and with no acceptable rescue plan available, the government of Israel decided to negotiate with the terrorists, stating its willingness to release terrorists for hostages. By then, most of the non-Israeli hostages had been released and flown from Entebbe to Paris. Of the 106 hostages remaining in Entebbe, most were Israelis. “My intention was not to use a ruse or a tactical ploy to gain time,” Prime Minister Rabin wrote of his government’s decision, “but to enter into serious negotiations, with Israel fulfilling whatever commitments it made.”
With the release of the non-Israeli hostages, important information started to come in on the state of affairs in the old terminal at Entebbe. Such information was crucial for planning any rescue, and so the military option had acquired momentum. By evening, Yoni received the formal order to start planning and preparing the Unit for a possible raid on Entebbe.
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