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'''Operation Yonatan''' was a hostage rescue mission performed by [[Israel]]i [[Sayeret Matkal]] special forces troops on the night of July 3 and early morning of July 4, 1976 to free hostages held on Air France Flight 139 at Entebbe Airport in [[Uganda]]. during During the planning and execution stages, the mission had been codenamed '''Operation Thunderbolt''' or '''Operation Thunderball''', but upon completion it was retroactively named ''Yonatan'' in memory of the raid's commander, Lieutenant Colonel '''Yonatan Netanyahu''', the only Israeli soldier killed in the raid, and also the elder brother of [[Benjamin Netanyahu]], who later became Israel's [[Prime Minister]].The hijacking was a collaborative terrorist operation between the [[PLO]] and the [[President]] of Uganda, [[Idi Amin]].<ref>''What is the story of the IDF's operation to release the hostages from Entebbe in July 1976?'' [http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_1967to1991_entebbe.php Palestine Facts] Accessed July 3, 2007</ref>

==BackgroundThe hijack==The crisis began six days earlier, when two [[Arab|Palestinians]] and two [[germanyGermany|Germans]] (Wilfried Böse and Brigitte Kuhlmann) hijacked an Air France Airbus en route to [[Paris]] from [[Athens]]. The flight had originated in Lod, Israel, and nearly a third of its passengers were Israeli or non-Israeli [[Judaism|Jews]]. Eight minutes after departing from Athens, At 12:20 the flight was airborne and climbing steadily to its cruising height of 31,000 feet. The stewards and stewardesses were already busy in the galleys preparing lunch for the 246 passengers. Eight minutes after takeoff, the terrorists made their move. One took up station at the front of the first class cabin, two in the tourist compartment, and the fourth, a revolver in one hand and a grenade in the other, entered the flight deck through the unlocked cockpit door. They ordered the pilot to divert the flight to Benghazi, [[Libya]] for refueling, where one passenger, a young worman, convinces the hijackers that she is pregnant and miscarrying, and is released. The plane then took off again and flew south to Entebbe, Uganda, where the plane landed at 0315hrs local time on the morning of June 28. Upon arrival, the four terrorists (two of whom were members of the '''Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine''', while the two Germans belonged to the [[Baader-Meinhof Gang]]) were joined by three other Arab terrorists. The passengers were kept on the aircraft until 1200hrs, at which point they were transported to the airfield's terminal building.