JERUSALEM -- The terrorist hijacking of an Israeli civilian bus Thursday recalled the coastal road massacre of 1978 that spurred Israel's first invasion of Lebanon.
Four Palestinian terrorists hijacked the civilian Egged bus Thursday night in Tel Aviv and ordered it to drive down the coastal road toward Egypt. Israeli soldiers stopped the bus in the Gaza Strip by shooting out its tires and gas tank.
A 10-hour standoff between the Israeli Army and the terrorists ended when the soldiers stormed the bus early Friday, killing one hostage and wounding seven others.
The Fatah organization of Yasser Arafat claimed responsibility for the Coastal Road assault. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestinian took responsibility for the Friday hijacking.
In the coastal road massacre of March 11, 1978, a total of 34 people died and 82 were injured, 72 of them civilians.
The 1978 assault began on a Saturday afternoon when 13 terrorists landed in a rubber dinghy on the beach at Kibbutz Maagan Mechael. The killing started at once when Gale Robin, an American photographer on the beach, was cut down.
The guerrilla group reached the coastal roadway, Israel's main highway, and opened fire at two vehicles. They commandeerd a taxi and began firing at a civilian bus, killing three civilians and wounding eight.
The gunmen then seized two buses on the busy highway and hijacked them to the area of the Tel Aviv country club. All the passengers were transferred to one bus for the final stage of the bloody drama.
In the wild shootout between the terrorists in the bus and Israeli soldiers and the police, the bus was burned to a charred shell. Police and the army blamed each other for the carnage, which both said could have been avoided.
Three days after the attack, Israel invaded southern Lebanon in what was called Operation Litani, with the objective of clearing the PLO out of the entire area below Tyre.
Eighteen Israelis were killed and 57 wounded in the seven-day Lebanese incursion.
