DEEP in the timeless Jordanian desert, the three silvery jetcraft glinted like metallic mirages in the afternoon sun, their finned tails emblazoned with the insignia of three famed airlines: TWA. BOAC and Swissair. Then suddenly a huge explosion, then another and another. The planes crumpled, then burst into flame. From the burning wreckage rose columns of black smoke that were visible 25 miles away in Amman, where Arab guerrillas fired their guns in celebration.
Mercifully, just hours before that apocalyptic scene occurred last week, the aircraft had been emptied of some 300 men, women and children who had been held hostage in them for as long as six days. But at least 40 of those passengers remained in the hands of their captors, waiting under threat of death for a political bargain that would free them in return for the release of Arab terrorists imprisoned in Israel and elsewhere. The rest were free to fly away.
The sky pirates responsible for one of the most audacious acts of political blackmail in modern times belong to a small band of Arab extremists called the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Equipped only with guns and grenades, they managed to terrorize air travelers from the North Atlantic to the Persian Gulf, jeopardize a shaky truce in the Middle East, bargain for human life with some of the world's most powerful nations, and hold the entire international community at bay. In all, they detonated some $50 million worth of jet aircraft. Faced with the outrage of most of the world, including nearly all Arab governments, the commandos bragged about their act, saying that "the headlines have shown that our cause is now clearly publicized."
Skyjackers are the greatest threat to travel since bandits roamed the Old West. With astonishing impunity, the pirates of the skies are able to take over the swift vehicles that represent the most advanced developments of modern technological civilization. Less and less often are the culprits misfits and former mental patients seeking psychic as well as physical escape. Increasingly, they are dedicated, vicious political fanatics, who have discovered that one of the most vulnerable points of the developed world is a jetliner at an altitude of 30,000 ft.
If the world has become a global village, as Marshall McLuhan would have it, the Palestinians have become its most troubled ghetto minority. Evicted from their ancient homeland by the influx of Jews after World War II. the Palestinians were driven into the squalid misery of refugee camps on the Jordanian desert. The Arab governments, which could have helped them, preferred to allow the refugees to remain in the camps as living symbols of the Israeli usurpation. The Israelis were unwilling to accept large numbers of Palestinians inside their own borders and thus risk becoming a minority within their own state. Gradually, the Palestinians honed their hostility. From the sons and daughters of the original refugees have sprung thousands of guerrilla fighters whose fury intimidates even the Arab governments.
Hellish Vow