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The Dimona research facility and the separation plant are protected not only by Israeli troops but by highly sophisticated electronic systems and radar screens that operate around the clock. All aircraft—including Israeli military planes—are barred from flying over the areas where the nuclear plants are located. During the Six-Day War, in fact, an Israeli Mirage III—either out of control or with its communications gear in operative—inadvertently flew over Dimona. Israeli defenders shot it down with a ground-to-air missile. In 1973 a Libyan airliner flying from Benghazi to Cairo lost its way because of a navigational error and flew toward a forbidden area. Israeli fighters tried to turn it back. Then, for security reasons, they shot it down, causing the death of 108 of the 113 people aboard.
* A symbolic reference to the state of Israel. The first two temples were destroyed by invading Babylonians around 586 B.C. and by the Romans in A.D. 70