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Leila and her friend expected to meet the other half of their team on the plane. But a hitch developed. El Al security officers had become suspicious of two young men who were traveling on Senegalese passports and who paid for their first-class seats with cash. At the last moment, El Al bumped the two men from Flight 219.
Determined to carry off the job on their own, Leila and her friend waited until the plane had completed its climbout from Amsterdam. With a war whoop, they leaped from their seats, pulled out the grenades and a pistol, and raced forward to the first-class cabin. There they ran into an El Al steward and an Israeli security agent. As the pilot put the Boeing 707 jetliner into a sharp bank in order to throw the hijackers off balance, passengers overpowered the girl and bound her with neckties. Meanwhile the Israelis fought the male skyjacker in a desperate hand-to-hand battle for possession of his gun. Then passengers heard a muffled pop-pop. Using his special low-power pistol, the Israeli agent had shot the Arab gunman, but the steward was critically wounded in the stomach. The 142 passengers and crew members may well have been saved from death or serious injury by a malfunctioning fuse on a grenade, which was found as the plane was making an emergency landing in London. For unknown reasons, it had failed to explode. Leila, unsuccessful in her attempt to blow up the plane and herself, was placed under British detention.
About 45 minutes later, the Front struck again. TWA's Flight 741, which had taken off from Frankfurt, was over the North Sea when the skyjackers seized the plane. "We are being kidnaped," radioed TWA Captain C.D. Wood. Then he set a course for the Middle East. On the flight across West Germany, the captured 707 carrying 149 passengers and a crew of ten was escorted by two helpless U.S. Air Force fighter planes.
At almost that same moment, Arab hijackers were seizing control of yet another plane. A Swissair DC-8 was over France on its way from Zurich to New York when French ground controllers were surprised to hear a woman speaking on the Swissair frequency. "Swissair Flight 100 is in our complete control," she said. "Our call sign is Haifa One. We will not answer to any other code." Meanwhile TWA Flight 741 had also issued a new call signal. It was Gaza One.
News of the skyjackings had flashed throughout the world, and millions waited anxiously for word about the planes.
They could not have imagined what was actually taking place. Gaza One and Haifa One were not headed toward a major airport. Instead, they were on a course toward a broad expanse of flat desert some 25 miles northwest of Amman. After World War II, the British had used the area as a training airfield, and its name—Dawson's Field —was taken from the British commander who sent units there.