The coastal road massacre occurred on 11 March 1978, when Palestinian militants hijacked a bus on the Coastal Highway of Israel and murdered its occupants; 38 Israeli civilians, including 13 children, were killed as a result of the attack while 76 more were wounded.Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. "Statement to the press by Prime Minister Begin on the massacre of Israelis on the Haifa-Tel Aviv Road". . Historical Documents Archive: 12 March 1978.Gregory S. Mahler. "Operation Litani is launched in retaliation for that month's Coastal Road massacre", Politics and Government in Israel: The Maturation of a Modern State, Rowman & Littlefield, 2004, , p. 259. The attack was planned by the influential Palestinian militant leader Khalil al-Wazir (aka Abu Jihad) and carried out by Fatah, a Palestinian nationalist party co-founded by al-Wazir and Yasser Arafat in 1959. The initial plan of the militants was to seize a luxury hotel in the Israeli city of Tel Aviv and take tourists and foreign ambassadors hostage to exchange them for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli custody.Moshe Brilliant, "Israeli officials Say Gunmen Intended to Seize Hotel", The New York Times, 13 March 1978.
According to Time magazine, the timing was aimed primarily at undermining Israeli–Egyptian peace talks between Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat and damaging Israel's tourism sector."A Sabbath of Terror", Time, 20 March 1978. However, due to a navigational error, the attackers ended up north of their target, and were forced to find an alternative method of transportation to their destination.
Until the Nova music festival massacre which occurred in 2023, it was the deadliest terrorist attack in the history of Israel. Time characterized it as "the worst terrorist attack in Israel's history." Fatah dubbed the hijacking "Operation of the Martyr Kamal Adwan"Edgar O'Ballance (1979). Language of Violence: The Blood Politics of Terrorism, p. 289, Presidio Press (original from the University of Michigan); , after the chief of operations of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), who was killed during the Israeli commando raid on Lebanon in April 1973.Greenaway, HDS, "Arab Terrorist Raid in Israel Kills 30", The Washington Post, 12 March 1978. In response to the massacre, Israel launched Operation Litani against PLO bases in southern Lebanon three days later.
Background and perpetrators The PLO claimed responsibility for the attack, which was planned by influential Fatah leader Abu Jihad. The attack's purpose was to disrupt ongoing Israeli-Egyptian peace negotiations. Yasser Arafat and Abu Jihad feared that a truce between Israel and Egypt would be detrimental to their cause. The operation was considered to be of such importance that Abu Jihad, together with his operations commander for Lebanon Azmi Zair, personally briefed the participants.Bergman, Ronen: Rise and Kill First, pp. 225–227
Israel received intelligence of the planned attack from a Shin Bet source codenamed Housemaid, who met with Israeli military intelligence official Amos Gilad in a safehouse in Jerusalem and briefed him about the plans. The intelligence was confirmed by wiretaps of the PLO offices in Cyprus. Israeli intelligence pinpointed the PLO squad's base to the beach of Damour, learned the attackers' names, and discovered that the goal behind the planned raid was to disrupt peace negotiations with Egypt. On 5 March 1978, Israel launched a military operation to preempt the planned attack. Shayetet 13 naval commandos raided the PLO base at Damour to wipe out the squad, but only killed all of those in one building, while those in a nearby building, who did not come out or open fire, survived the raid.
After intelligence was received from Housemaid that not all of the PLO squad had been killed, Gilad demanded that the commandos be sent in again to wipe out the remaining guerrillas, arguing that as Abu Jihad now knew that Israel was aware of his plans he would be spurred to launch the attack sooner, but Defense Minister Ezer Weizman, not wanting headlines of an Israeli raid on Lebanon to cast a shadow over his upcoming visit to the Pentagon, refused to authorize another such mission. The surviving guerrillas proceeded to carry out the attack.
Attack Landing and initial attack On 9 March 1978, 13 Palestinian fedayeen, including 18-year-old female Dalal Mughrabi, left Lebanon on a boat headed for the Israeli coast. They were equipped with Kalashnikov rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, light mortars and high explosives. On 11 March, they transferred to two Zodiac boats and headed towards the shore. One of the Zodiacs capsized in the rough weather, and two of the militants drowned, but the surviving 11 carried on with their mission.[ Coastal road terrorist: No apologies, Haaretz. According to Abu Absa, one of the surviving Palestinian perpetrators, Mughrabi was the only woman in the group and she was not the commander.
The eleven survivors landed on a beach near the kibbutz Ma'agan Michael, located between Haifa and Hadera, north of Tel Aviv. Due to stormy weather they had lost their bearings and believed they had landed in Cyprus. They met American photographer Gail Rubin, who was taking nature photographs on the beach and asked her where they were, and were relieved when she told them they were in Israel. Then they killed her. Both surviving attackers said that Mughrabi shot Rubin, who was a niece of United States Senator Abraham A. Ribicoff.
Bus hijacking
The militants then walked less than a mile up to the four-lane highway, opened fire at passing cars, and hijacked a white Mercedes taxi, killing its occupants. Setting off down the highway toward Tel Aviv, they hijacked a chartered bus carrying Egged bus drivers and their families on a day outing, along the Coastal Highway. Although Abu Jihad had ordered them to seize a hotel, the militants improvised and changed the nature of their attack due to the dozens of hostages in their hands. The militants drove down the coastal highway, shooting and throwing grenades at passing cars. They also shot at the passengers and threw at least one body out of the bus. At one point they commandeered Bus 901, traveling from Tel Aviv to Haifa, taking its passengers hostage as well, and forced the passengers from the first bus to board it.
At one point, the bus stopped, and one of the perpetrators got out and fired directly into a passing car, killing a teenager, Imri Tel-Oren, and injuring his father Hanoch. Sharon Tel-Oren, Imri's mother, testified: "We were in our station wagon, driving along the coastal highway. We saw something odd ahead – a bus, but it seemed to be stopped. Then we saw someone lying on the road. There was shattered glass all over, children screaming. Then we heard the gunshots. Imri was asleep in the back seat. The bullet passed through the front seat and hit his head, killing him instantly. My husband was shot in the arm, and lost the movement in his fingers."The dolls' journey to Israel, The Jerusalem Post; accessed 10 March 2018.
Police were alerted to the attack; their cars caught up to the bus and trailed it. Although the militants fired at the pursuing police cars, policemen did not return fire, fearing they would hit the civilians inside the bus.Black, Ian (1992): Israel's Secret Wars: A History of Israel's Intelligence Services Police quickly set up a roadblock, but the militants plowed the bus through it and continued their journey. According to Khaled Abu Asba, one of the two surviving attackers, police set up multiple roadblocks, and there was an exchange of fire at every intersection.
Standoff at the Glilot Junction The bus was finally stopped by a large police roadblock set up at the Glilot Junction near Herzliya, which included nails planted on the road to puncture the bus' tires. Due to the speed at which the attack was transpiring, Israeli counter-terrorism squads had been unable to mobilize quickly enough, and the roadblock was manned by ordinary patrolmen and traffic policemen, who were lightly armed in comparison to the militants and untrained in dealing with hostage situations. A firefight erupted, and police broke the bus' windows and yelled at passengers to jump.
Escaping passengers were shot at by one of the militants. According to the Israeli police, Assaf Hefetz, then head of the Israeli Police counter-terrorism unit, arrived at the scene before his unit, and stormed the bus, killing two militants. Hefetz sustained a shoulder injury during the battle, and was later awarded the Israeli Police Medal of Courage.Interview with Assaf Hefetz, jpress.org.il, 30 October 1984.Assaf Hefetz: Israeli Police Medal of Courage, gvura.org; accessed 10 March 2018.
The battle reached its climax when the bus exploded and burst into flames. Some of the militants and hostages escaped but most died in the fire. The explosion may have been set off by a burning fuel tank, or by grenades. The Palestinians claimed that the Israelis destroyed the bus with fire from helicopter gunships.Willenson, Kim, Milan J. Kubic, and William E. Schmidt, "Slaughter in Israel", Newsweek, 20 March 1978.Black, Ian & Hugh McLeod, (11 March 2010). "Israel-Hizbullah prisoner exchange: profiles", TheGuardian.com; accessed 10 March 2018. Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman, in his book Rise and Kill First, which was based on interviews with Israeli intelligence veterans, claimed that the explosion was due to a grenade blast that came as a result of a scuffle between militants and hostage Avraham Shamir. According to Bergman, during the firefight, Shamir saw one of the militants resting the hand holding his pistol on his daughter's head, after which he charged at him, seized the gun, and shot a militant standing at the front of the bus, then fired three shots at another militant. Another hostage warned Shamir of a militant aiming his gun at him from behind, after which Shamir turned and they both fired, wounding each other. Shamir then saw the militant from whom he had seized the gun lying injured on the floor holding a grenade with the safety pin pulled out. After he dropped it on the floor, Shamir tried to use the militant's body to blunt the effects of the blast. The grenade's explosion killed the militant and five hostages, seriously wounded Shamir, and set the bus on fire.
A total of 38 civilians were killed in the attack, including 13 children, while 71 others were wounded. Of the 11 perpetrators, 9 were killed.
Motives One motive for the attack from the PLO was to derail Egypt-Israel peace talks. In October 1976, Egypt, the PLO, and Syria were back in contact with each other, though temporarily, under Saudi auspices, at the Riyadh conference that year. In 1977 "...the United States appeared anxious to coordinate Arab approval of a Geneva peace conference, as well as the presence there of Palestinians, and most important, the cooperation of the Soviet Union." Both the Egyptians and the Israelis were opposed to the possibility of a political settlement which would have the effect of uniting the Arabs with the Palestinians or the two superpowers against Israel. "No less than Israelis, therefore, Sadat opposed the joint US–USSR statement of October 1, 1977. Not only did the statement put the Palestinian question on a par with the return of Egyptian territory, it almost meant a clear victory for Syrian pan-Arabism."