Leila Khaled: Hijacker

The woman over there, with the cases, is a terrorist.

With two hand grenades taped to her waist

and a pistol tucked into her panties

she became the first woman ever to hi-jack an airplane.

That's why she became my idol.

Supposing during any of these operations she was killed

- what would you think then, your own sister?

Yes, I would feel proud for that she is... she's one of a freedom fighter...

for their own land and for their own country...

There is no way how to use terror against civilians.

You can't justify it. There is no way.

They trained for it and went for it.

And I don't think it has helped them at all, to tell you the truth.

I really don't think it has helped them at all.

From a distance you could tell that they were young.

She especially was young and attractive.

I mean, she was a striking individual that you wouldn't associate

with a hijacking.

A not unattractive girl, the Palestinians feels she gives the movement a touch of glamour.

War is war.

We have to fight our enemy until we go back to our country.

Our demands and conditions are very clear:

The release of comrade Leila Khaled.

What are they going to do... when they'll be free?

This young lady will go to a convent?

She will get married and raise children?

If it does good for my cause, I'll be happy to accept death.

The story of Leila Khaled begins in Haifa.

An lsraeli port on the Mediterranean Sea.

She was born here on the 9th of April 1944.

At that time, Haifa was part of Palestine.

This is the earliest photo of Leila Khaled.

She's the one to the left of her brothers and sisters

standing in front of the family home on Stanton Street.

Far away from what's going on in Europe...

Just one month after this photo was taken

Leila turns four and becomes a refugee.

Palestine becomes lsrael.

The victims of the Holocaust have, after years in exile,

a country they can call their own.

Journey's end.

The first of ten thousand Jewish refugees arrive at Haifa.

Reunions between long lost relations now write a happy ending to a tragic story.

But the situation in the new nation is untenable.

These men are members of the Jewish terrorist group

known as the Stern Gang, best known for the assassination

of Folke Bernadotte, the Swedish UN negotiator.

On Leila's fourth birthday, they kill hundreds of people

in the village of Deir Yassin.

The Palestinian population is in panic.

Leila's family does what everybody else does.

They leave their home in fear of their lives.

Leila's father stays in Haifa to fight in the Arab-lsraeli war,

to get his home back.

The rest of the family flees to Lebanon.

Life in Lebanon is about endurance.

And waiting.

Everything will be fine if they can Just return.

This photo was taken in 1967.

It's one of the few photos in which Leila is smiling.

Maybe because she has just packed her bags

and bought a one-way ticket to Haifa. She's convinced she will at last return.

This is the man who raised her hopes.

The Egyptian president, Gamal Abdel Nasser.

He has promised that the Palestinians will return.

Today, the President said: if lsrael threatens war, we are ready.

At last he has come, the leader that would demand their return.

To many outside Egypt he became a symbol of resistance

to western colonialism and imperialism.

He's defied lsrael and its powerful allies in the West.

The world holds its breath.

And Leila Khaled believes him.

Exile will soon be a distant memory.

The time has come.

On June the fifth lsraeli planes struck the Egyptian air force on the ground.

Hero today of the Jewish people, general Mosche Dayan, defense minister

and architect of the swiftest, most overwhelming victory of all times.

The dream is smashed to pieces. lsrael occupies the rest of Palestine.

The mighty leader's promise meant nothing.

It is now Leila realizes; no one else is going to help them.

She'll have to do it herself.

Nice day, nice Mediterranean day.

Clear weather. We just passed the Italian port of Brindisi

and one of the flight attendants had asked permission to come in to the cockpit.

When she opened the door, the gentleman who was accompanying Leila

trust her aside and came in.

"This is the Palestinian movement taking over your airplane."

And he was armed with a pistol.

You Just looked at them and: "What's going on?"

She was very fashionably dressed, all in white...

A white floppy hat, white tunic and white trousers and also a...

Yes, she was pretty young and she had a man with her as well.

They were both wearing sunglasses, I think.

She took out a hand grenade which she took the pin out of

to demonstrate that it was a real weapon and if we decided to overtake her

it would of course detonate and would probably have severe consequences.

I think the captain first said, "We have been hijacked."

We sort of looked at each other and, you know, is this real or not?

Then they told us all to sit in our places

with our hands behind our heads.

And then people started to...

to feel uncomfortable and some started crying.

Mom turned to us and calmed us down and gave us rosaries.

I forgot that until she mentioned it, but I do remember holding the rosaries

that we had gotten in Rome.

And we said, "What do you want to do?" "Well just fly."

So we talked to air traffic control: "This is TWA flight 840 and..."

"Oh no, you are not flight 840 anymore..."

Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please...

This is your new captain speaking Shadia Abu Ghazali...

The Che Guevara command unit of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine

which has taken over command of this TWA flight.

Then they flew over lsrael.

Fighter planes came up on both sides of the plane...

And then they also talked to the ones on the ground, saying:

"Well, we're here... ha ha... like, what can you do about it?"

And now we are becoming a little insistent that they tell us were they would

ultimately like to land.

Because in a not too far distant future we were going to land

whether they wanted to or not, because we would be running out of fuel.

So finally they said: "Well, let's go to Damascus."

And ultimately we did.

We landed at the brand spanking new piece of concrete at Damascus.

I remember at the very end when we had landed, come to a halt

that she came over the loudspeaker and said:

"Please get out, there's a bomb on the plane."

Everyone was calm and there was no problem.

The plane made a nice landing and all the passengers got out.

There was an lsraeli assassin on board who was responsible for the deaths of

many Arab women and children, and all they wanted to do was to bring this

assassin to a friendly Arab city and give him a fair trial.

That's all they wanted, really.

But the lsraeli assassin wasn't on the plane.

At the last moment, he decided not to take Flight 840.

The assassin was the lsraeli ambassador to the United States

Yitzhak Rabin.

Leila and her companion are detained by the Syrian police

but mostly for the sake of appearances.

They are both released after three weeks.

The hi-Jacking is still a success.

Leila and the Palestinians are suddenly world famous.

Foreign newspapers start reporting on the situation in the Middle-East.

Leila, however, has disappeared. Nobody knows where she is.

Some say she is being protected by her organization,

the PFLP, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Another rumor says she has visited a Lebanese plastic surgeon

to change her appearance.

- Hello, is this Leila Khaled? - Yes.

Hello, my name is Lina Makboul and I'm calling from Sweden.

Hello.

I have read about you and I would like to make a film about you.

A film?

Its early morning when Leila Khaled and her companion

Patrick Arguello, board Flight 219 from Amsterdam to New York.

The PFLP has planned a synchronized attack.

A number of planes will be hi-jacked at the same time

and converge on Dawson Field in Jordan.

Leila's mission is to hi-Jack an lsraeli EL AL plane.

But this time, nothing goes according to plan.

I told my security man to come to the cockpit.

Something is wrong, I don't know what, I don't feel easy...

I was inside prepared already to something which I didn't realize.

We where in the air sailing smoothly. I was reading and they were very quiet.

They didn't say a word to anyone neither to themselves, to one another nor to me.

And then suddenly he rose, and he let out a bellow, an animal-like bellow.

And he had this little tiny pistol in his hand...

A few seconds later we started to hear knocking very hard on the door

which was closed.

Flight engineer looks through, we had some way to look what's going on.

He says: "Look, I see a woman with two handgrenades."

"I see a man with a gun pointing to a man."

And few seconds later we heard the voice saying:

"Open the door. if you don't open, we are going to shoot the person".

At this time I had to play God.

I am going now to put the airplane into a negative G.

Instead of flying like this, it goes like this.

So everybody... there is no floor so he must fall down.

We felt that the airplane was going up and down in a few strong movements.

At the same time this happened, some guy got up behind the woman and disarmed her...

got the grenades away from her. There was approximately three shoots fired.

A security man apparently killed the male hijacker.

A steward is wounded.

EL AL flight 219 is forced to make an emergency landing in London.

Where Leila is detained.

Leila Khaled has been held here at the Ealing headquarters of exdivision.

She's being detained under the alien's order in a cell 12 feet by 10

and she is accompanied 24 hours a day by two woman police officers.

In custody, Leila's concern is for her companion.

She's unaware that the PFLP has succeeded in its mission.

Three planes have been forced to land at Dawson Field in Jordan.

And all the passengers are held hostage.

All women and children who should have been released were released.

Our demands and conditions are very clear and we will not go back on them.

These conditions are...

the release of comrade Leila Khaled and the martyr's body and their arrival to a

safe place in exchange for the British hostages.

What are they going to do when they'll be free?

She will try to do it again.

A reliable source has confirmed that the blowing up of the planes was intended

as a warning to the British government.