Almost 36 years have passed since that early evening on October 16, 1986, when an explosion occurred in the Phantom plane of Yishai Aviram and Ron Arad in the skies of Lebanon.
Aviram was rescued from the area, while Arad's fate was and remains a mystery and an open wound in Israeli society.
Four days after that dramatic day, the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Security Committee convened, and now for the first time the minutes from the discussion are revealed, which provide a glimpse of what Israel did to reach Arad, what it knew and especially how much it did not know about its situation.
Only a small part of the documents was blacked out by former censor Natan Lest, who recently began going through the classified materials to make them accessible to the public.
Rabin.
Slight chance, photo: Mickey Astell.
Courtesy of the IDF Archives at the Ministry of Defense
Among others, the late Minister of Defense Yitzhak Rabin, the late Air Force Commander General Amos Lapidot, and the assistant head of the Ministry of Defense for Research, the late Brigadier General Elkana Har-Nof, were invited to the discussion at the Foreign Affairs Committee.
Defense Minister Rabin opens the discussion on the downing of Arad's plane, who explains to those present what the attack was that Arad and Aviram went on.
After him, General Lapidot explains what the attacked target is, what its location is and who controls it.
"The plane fell apart"
"The attack that was carried out was larger than usual. It was carried out by six phantom planes, each with ten bombs," says General Lapidot, "it was carried out on Thursday afternoon, at 15:45. According to the plan, the first pair of phantom planes entered, the bomb targets, and after about 20 minutes a formation of two more planes came in. An hour or less later the third formation came in, and when it attacked from a relatively high altitude (15 thousand feet) the carrier plane released the bombs, and suddenly there was a very strong explosion that damaged the plane and it fell apart".
torches
Effective covering, photo: Sa'ar Ya'akov/L.A.M
Aviram
Directed the rescue, photo: Air Force Base
MK Lin: "At what height?" Lapidot: "8,000 feet above the surface.
The pilots felt the explosion very strongly.
The pilot who was rescued said that for a short period of time he felt as if he was losing consciousness.
He then found himself hanging from the parachute.
He recovered and saw his partner (Ron Arad, LS) hanging on the parachute. He took out his walkie-talkie and tried to contact his partner, but was unsuccessful. The parachute lasts 4-5 minutes, during which time they were shot at, but the pilot Asher returned home unharmed, he also did not see that the other was harmed. The two pilots landed at a distance of 4 km from the target of the attack, south of it.
The pilot who returned entered a tangled wadi and hid among the bushes.
He saw his partner 200 meters away, he called to him but did not answer."
Here the torches describe the extraction.
"The incident happened at 4:45 p.m., when darkness falls at 5:30 p.m. We immediately organized for cover. We carried out aggressive cover operations in the area to prevent the terrorists from reaching the pilots and capturing them. Three pairs of planes and helicopter gunships prevented the terrorists from entering the area, so that when it was dark we could Rescue the pilots. The cover pinned the terrorists to the ground...
Fire at helicopters
"The pilot directed our planes that were covering him. He also directed them during the rescue attempts. In such terrain conditions, any attempt to rescue is almost impossible, also because of the proximity to enemy forces, so we considered performing a complicated and dramatic operation that would increase the chance of rescuing the pilots. We operated using smaller combat helicopters, which are difficult to hit and they can fight and return fire. After trying for half an hour, one of the combat helicopters managed to make close contact with the pilot and reached him. The pilot was able to hang onto the helicopter's skid."
Yishai Aviram hanged on the helicopter and was rescued, photo: screenshot
MK Sherid: "Did he actually hang himself by his hands?" Lapidos: "Yes, he hung himself by his hands and thus flew 5 km at a slow speed, because there was a fear that he might fall. There is a method of sitting someone who is hanging from the outside on a bunk and tying him with a leash, But when the helicopter tried to land to do so, fire was opened on it again, and the crew gave up on the idea. The pilot simply sat on the ski and held the beam, and the helicopter literally ran away. One of the rescue planes flew by the helicopter in order to transfer the pilot to it.
"At some point along the way they wanted to land, but even then RPG fire was opened on them, and the rescue helicopter did not have time to land. When it became clear that there was no fear that the pilot would fall, because he was sitting with his back to the wind and the wind was pinning him to the beam, the helicopter continued fly at a speed of close to 200 km per hour.
The survivor pilot is simply an excellent guy, with exceptional physical fitness."
A little later, General Lapid tells that the efforts to rescue Ron Arad continued during the night and two days after the incident, and why he was lost in the first place.
MK Druckman asks: "What do we know about the fate of the second pilot?" Lapidot: "The picture that is being painted is that he was captured by Amal, that he is alive and his hand is broken.
There are also reports that it was handed over to the Syrians, but these are not certain reports.
Nor can we rule out the possibility that he is not alive.
The chance that he is in the hands of Amal or someone else is higher than the chance that he is not alive."
Natan Lest, photo: Knesset Spokesperson
Those present in the room move on to discuss the assessment of where Arad was moved ("The most likely thing is that Amal moved it to the north", but the information on the matter contradicts), and at one point Rabin takes the right to speak.
"As for the question of whether we did everything to rescue the pilots, in my opinion the answer is positive," says the Minister of Defense at the time, "at 11:30 p.m. a large force was needed to penetrate the area and search it. There was talk of a force of 100 people, but from the summary of the picture that was painted for the Chief of Staff and me It turned out that it is doubtful whether our pilots actually talked to the two... all the information we had gave us reason to assume that the pilot was no longer there.
Under such conditions a large force had to be sent to search for him in the wadi at night.
The conclusion was that the chance of finding him in the area was slim, therefore I came to the conclusion that the rescue force should not be jeopardized.
The feeling was that the pilot was in their hands, alive or not."
Inda Novominsky, director of the Knesset archives, said: "According to the regulations of the Archives Law, the meetings of the committee plenary are confidential for 30 years, the minutes of the subcommittees for 50 years, and some of the materials related to the secret services are confidential for 90 years. When the disclosure period passes, Each protocol must undergo disclosure that includes a careful examination before its publication according to the criteria of 'immediate danger to the security of the state', the modesty of the individual and other considerations."
The revealer of the protocol, Natan Lest, told Israel Hayom: "The Knesset has a huge volume of materials in the various areas of life. It is not obvious that the Knesset chose to check what can be revealed."
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