Terrorism To Save the Children

The skyjacking had the classic ingredients: gun-toting men, innocent hostages, tense conversations between cockpit and control tower. But little else was predictable about the drama that began last week in a southern Soviet city and ended at Ben-Gurion Airport outside Tel Aviv. Not only was it unusual for Moscow to bow to the demands of hijackers, but the incident ended peacefully only after extraordinary cooperation between the Soviet Union and Israel, two countries that do not have diplomatic relations.

The episode began when four armed men, led by Pavel Yakshiyants, 38, a driver from Krasnodar with a criminal record, commandeered a school bus in Ordzhonikidze (pop. 308,000), 900 miles south of Moscow. On board were 30 fourth-graders and their teacher, Natalya Yefimova. The hijackers demanded a plane to take them to Israel, South Africa or Pakistan. "In order to save the children and the teacher, a decision was made to give them a plane," explained Albert Vlasov, head of the Soviet press agency Novosti. The government also tossed aboard narcotics and bags of rubles and U.S. dollars.

The following day the Ilyushin-76 transport, with a crew of eight and the hijackers aboard, took off. Soviet authorities contacted Israel and asked permission for the plane to land there, perhaps counting on the Israelis to take tough countermeasures against the fugitives. Eager to build goodwill with Moscow and sympathetic to the possibility the hijackers might be Soviet Jews, Jerusalem approved the request.

The Israelis took elaborate military precautions in case the hijackers blew up the aircraft once it landed on Israeli soil. The craft was, after all, the first Soviet plane to fly directly from the Soviet Union to Israel in more than 20 years. But as soon as the plane taxied to a halt, one of the hijackers jumped out. After a brief discussion, he handed over his pistol and agreed to let the crew come out. The other hijackers surrendered four more pistols and a sawed-off shotgun, as well as three large bags of ransom money.

The hijackers, none of whom were Jewish, asked Israeli officials to allow them to be flown on to South Africa. Soviet officials requested that the armed bandits be sent back for trial. At week's end Israeli officials agreed to return the plane and the crew to the Soviets. In Moscow Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze personally thanked the chief of a visiting Israeli consular team. Perhaps both sides hope this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.