Kav 300 affair

The Bus 300 affair (Hebrew: פרשת קו 300 Translit.: Parashat Kav 300 Translated: Line 300 affair), also known as Kav 300 affair, was a 1984 incident in which Shin Bet members executed two Palestinian bus hijackers, immediately after the hostage crisis incident ended and they had been captured.

After the incident, the Shin Bet members gave false testimony on their involvement in the affair. The Israeli military censor blacked out coverage of the hijacking originally, but nevertheless, the publication of information regarding the affair in foreign press, and eventually in the Israeli media, led a public uproar which led many in the Israeli public to demand that the circumstances surrounding the deaths of the hijackers would be investigated. In 1985 a senior Israeli army general Yitzhak Mordechai was acquitted of charges related to the deaths of the captured hijackers. Later, it emerged that members of the Shin Bet, Israel's internal security service, had implicated the general, while concealing who gave the direct order that the prisoners be killed. In 1986 the Attorney General of Israel, Yitzhak Zamir, was forced to resign after he refused to call off an investigation into the Shin Bet's role in the affair. Shortly afterwards Avraham Shalom, head of the Shin Bet resigned and was given a full Presidential pardon for unspecified crimes, while pardons were granted to many involved before charges were laid. Following the scandal, the Landau Commission was set up to investigate Shin Bet procedures.

On Thursday 12 April 1984, four armed Arab guerillas from the Gaza Strip reached Ashdod where they boarded, as paying passengers, an Egged Bus No. 300 en route from Tel Aviv to Ashkelon with 41 passengers. The Palestinians hijacked it shortly after it left the station at 7:30 pm. During the takeover one of the bus passengers was severely injured. The hijackers stated that they were armed with knives and a suitcase containing two anti-tank rounds which they threatened to explode. The hijackers forced the bus to change its direction and drive towards the Egyptian border.