It was June 14, 1985. The engines of TWA Flight 847 had been humming steadily for about 20 minutes after a routine takeoff from Athens. It was an ordinary flight bound for Rome.
But suddenly, two armed men rose from among the passengers. One carried a hand grenade. The other held a pistol.
“Keep your heads down!” One of them shouted frantically in English. “Nobody look up! Put your hands behind your necks immediately!”
The passengers complied, but the hijackers began to act aggressively, beating and humiliating some of them.
The hijackers, Mohammed Ali Hamadi and Hassan Izz al-Din, were Lebanese members of Shiite armed groups. They were linked to Hezbollah, which had publicly announced its existence only months earlier.
It was a carefully organized hijacking operation, with an aim to pressure the United States and force Israel to release Lebanese prisoners in its custody.
The hijackers ordered the pilot to divert the plane to Beirut. What followed was a prolonged round of negotiations that lasted 17 days, during which the aircraft shuttled between Beirut and Algiers.
There were 153 passengers aboard, most of them Americans.
The hijackers shot and killed Robert Stethem, a U.S. Navy diver, and dumped his body onto the airport tarmac in order to force the authorities to meet their demands.
The first stage of negotiations secured the release of the Greek passengers. Among them was Demis Roussos, the celebrated Greek singer. At the news conference marking their release, he appeared alongside Nabih Berri, then the leader of the Amal Movement, who later became speaker of Lebanon’s Parliament and remains in that post today.
After days of tense bargaining, negotiators reached an agreement that secured the release of all the American passengers. They had endured 17 days of fear, repeated death threats, and sustained psychological abuse.
Hamadi, along with fellow suspects Hassan Izz al-Din and Ali Atwa, remains a fugitive from U.S. justice and is still listed among the FBI’s most wanted terrorists.
The American response was swift. Between the violence and the severe lack of security at Beirut airport at the time, President Ronald Reagan’s administration imposed an immediate and comprehensive ban on direct air travel between the United States and Lebanon in 1985. It was a ban that remained in place for more than four decades, until President Donald Trump issued instructions to begin lifting it after meeting Lebanese President Joseph Aoun on Tuesday.
The decision to restore flights to Lebanon therefore carries deep political significance. The original ban was rooted not in commercial or logistical considerations, but in a bloody episode that came to symbolize Lebanon’s collapse into armed factionalism and the rise of militant groups aligned with Iran.
Aoun arrived at the White House as the first Lebanese president to present a practical program aimed at disarming Hezbollah after repeated rounds of fighting with Israel. At the same time, the group, which the United States designates as a terrorist organization, has increasingly revived the violent rhetoric of the 1980s and invoked tactics associated with that era, including suicide attacks and the abduction of foreign nationals. Such kidnappings receded only after Lebanon’s civil war ended in 1990.
The hijacking of TWA Flight 847 was a direct expression of the wider conflict then unfolding across the Middle East, and of Hezbollah’s ideological and military dynamics.
Through operations of this kind, Hezbollah was not merely declaring its alignment with Iran’s regional project. It was acting on the slogan “Death to America,” heard frequently then in both Tehran and in Beirut’s southern suburbs.
Now, more than 40 years after the hijacking, Trump is moving to end the ban and has directed the U.S. transportation secretary to resume flights.
Many people may be unaware of the history behind the decision. Some have assumed that direct flights were halted for operational reasons, such as cost or low passenger demand.
But the reality is far more consequential.
The decision reflects a broader change in Lebanon’s political and security balance, including the erosion of Hezbollah’s dominance over the state after decimation from severe Israeli strikes and the group’s weapons being designated as illegal by the Lebanese government.
After the infamous operation, the hijackers were pursued. According to FBI records, a federal grand jury returned an indictment against them on Nov. 14, 1985. Hamadi and Izz al-Din were aboard the aircraft, while a third suspect, Ali Atwa, was arrested at Athens airport before boarding the flight.
An Interpol Red Notice was later issued for Hamadi, and U.S. authorities offered a reward for information leading to his arrest or conviction.
A U.S. federal court also accused Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyeh of masterminding the hijacking.
On Jan. 13, 1987, Ali Hamadi was arrested at Frankfurt Airport in what was then West Germany after authorities found explosives in his possession.
The United States sought his extradition, but the West German government opted to prosecute him domestically.
On May 17, 1989, Hamadi was convicted of murder, hostage-taking, assault and air piracy, and was sentenced to life in prison.
German authorities released him on Dec. 15, 2005, and he returned to Beirut the following day.
Trump’s decision to restore direct air service between the United States and Lebanon therefore extends beyond aviation policy. It effectively closes a chapter on one of the most notorious acts of terrorism against Americans in the 1980s.
Whether the move ultimately proves durable will depend not on commercial demand alone, but on whether Lebanon’s political transformation proves lasting enough to convince Washington that the conditions which produced the TWA Flight 847 hijacking belong firmly to the past.
Adapted and translated from the original Arabic.
