A helicopter mishap yesterday involving Premier Yitzhak Rabin and Foreign Minister Yigal Allon has aroused sharp criticism of government leaders for flying in the same aircraft. The mishap occurred when a helicopter carrying Rabin, Allon and several senior military officers to Sinai experienced engine failure and was forced to land on a Gaza Strip beach. No one was hurt.
The ministers were enroute to the Sinai buffer zone where Israel received the bodies of nine soldiers killed in the Yom Kippur War and the remains of two Israeli spies hanged in Cairo in 1955 in exchange for 50 terrorists released to Egypt. A second helicopter picked them up and continued the journey without incident.
Defense Minister Shimon Peres who also attended the ceremonies, flew to Sinai separately. But all three ministers returned in the same helicopter. This elicited an angry charge today of “irresponsibility” from Zeev Schiff, military correspondent of Haaretz. He recalled the recent death of Queen Alia of Jordan when her helicopter crashed in a freak storm. In 1973, West German Chancellor Willy Brandt, on a visit to Israel, had a narrow escape when his helicopter almost fell off the edge of Masada.
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