Israeli Embassies and diplomatic missions around the world were put on alert for possible terrorist retaliation as the country’s leaders continued today to debate the wisdom of forcing a private Libyan plane to land at an Israel Air Force base Tuesday because top Palestinian terrorist leaders were believed to have been aboard.
The plane, a Gulfstream executive jet enroute from Benghazi, Libya, to Damascus, was released four and a half hours after it was intercepted following an identity check which determined there were no terrorists among its nine passengers and three-man crew.
The incident, in addition to being an embarrassment to Israel, raised strong possibilities that terrorists would launch new strikes at Israeli targets. Libyan leader Col. Muammar Qaddafi vowed reprisals yesterday. Ahmed Jibril, one of the terrorists presumed to have been on the plane, warned civilians today to stay off Israeli and American airliners.
A spokesman for El Al, Israel’s national airline, said today there were no grounds to fear a terrorist response because El Al maintains the most stringent security measures and its flight paths take it far from Libyan airspace.
SOME CABINET MINISTERS NOT CONSULTED
Several Cabinet members stressed today they were not notified or consulted in advance on the decision to intercept the Libyan plane. Premier Shimon Peres told the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Security Committee yesterday that the decision had to be made in a matter of minutes, leaving no time for general discussion. Only he, Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and Chief of Staff Gen. Moshe Levy were consulted and all approved the interception.
Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir, the Likud leader, said he had not been privy-to-the-plan-but would have approved it had he been asked. He said, in an Israel Radio interview, that Israel would continue to act against terrorist leaders by every possible means, and he was convinced they would ultimately be captured and punished.
Rabin made a similar statement yesterday, saying Israel would continue to combat terrorism by every means, even if sometimes it makes mistakes, as it did Tuesday.
A MAJOR PROBLEM
But Minister-Without-Portfolio Ezer Weizman said in a television interview last night that had he been consulted in advance, he would have opposed the interception. He raised what he said was a major problem: What would Israel have done with the terrorists had any been captured?
Putting them on trial, like captured Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, who was tried in 1961 — and subsequently executed — would only invite more terrorist attempts to seize Israelis as hostages and hold them for the release of the captured terrorist leaders, Weizman said. Others made the same point. Police Minister Haim Barlev noted that the Cabinet has thoroughly debated how to fight terrorism, but has not yet discussed what to do with any terrorist leader who may be caught.
Barlev warned that Israel should prepare itself for the possibility that Syria and Libya would try to take revenge for the interception. The nine passengers in the jet turned out to be Syrian political figures, including the deputy secretary of the Ba’ath Party, who were returning home from a conference of Arab radical groups in Tripoli, Libya.
Peres told the Zionist Genera Council meeting in Jerusalem today that Israel would never flinch from any measures aimed at preventing terrorism on land, sea or in the air.
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