Why Did Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Cite Bus 300 While Pledging Apology To Israeli President.

December 2025: In a surprising Letter Addressed to the Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged apology seeking pardon on the three criminal charges against him, in which opponents say the entire judicial reform was a tool to evade accountability for.

In the pardon request Netanyahu has cited the 1984 ‘Bus 300’ affair, a request as proof of the Presidency’s power to “pre-emptively” pardon Netanyahu, even though his trial has been ongoing since 2018. In 1984, Israeli security agents killed two captured Palestinians and falsified the record. When photographs surfaced proving the extrajudicial killings, then-President, and father of the current President, Chaim Herzog, issued pre-trial pardons in the case on the condition that those involved admit responsibility and leave public life. The Supreme Court upheld the pardons on national security grounds.

Before discussing about the present pledge-pardon matrix, let us have a detailed insight about the most escalated international affaire – ‘Bus 300’.

Bus 300 hostage crisis –

On Thursday 12th April 1984, 04 armed Arab guerillas from the Gaza Strip reached Ashdod where they boarded, as paying passengers, an Egged bus operating on intercity bus route No.300 which was 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.

Shortly after the bus was hijacked, the hijackers released a pregnant woman from the bus south of Ashdod. She hitchhiked to a gas station and from there alerted the authorities to the hijacking. As a result, Israeli military forces began chasing the bus.

The bus, moving at 120 km/hour, smashed through two primitive road blocks until Israeli soldiers fired at the bus tires and successfully managed to disable the bus near the Palestinian camp of Deir el-Balah located in the Gaza Strip, only 10 miles north of the Egyptian border. When the bus stopped, some of the passengers managed to escape from the bus through an open door.

In the ensuing stand-off members of the Israeli media began to gather at the scene. Also present were senior military officers and politicians. These included Chief of Staff Moshe Levi, Minister of Defence Moshe Arens, and the director of the Israeli domestic intelligence service Shin Bet, Avraham Shalom. Brigadier General Yitzhak Mordechai was put in charge of the rescue operation.

The hijackers, who were holding the bus passenger’s hostage, demanded the release of 500 Arab prisoners imprisoned in Israel and free passage to Egypt for themselves. The hijackers stated that they would not hesitate to blow up their explosive-laden suitcase and kill all the passengers on the bus.

As negotiations proceeded, Shin Bet Intelligence operatives on the scene quickly concluded that the hijackers were behaving like amateurs, one later stating that ‘it’s a bit ridiculous to call this a hostage-bargaining terrorist attack,’ and that the four did not pose a risk.

Takeover:

After lengthy negotiations, at around 07:00 hours of 13th April, a team of Sayeret Matkal commandos led by Doron Kempel stormed the bus while shooting at the hijackers through the vehicle’s windows. During this takeover operation, the soldiers were able to kill 02 of the hijackers, capture the 02 additional hijackers, and release all hostages except for 01 passenger, a 19 years old female soldier named Irit Portuguez who was killed by the IDF forces fire during the takeover operation. 07 passengers were wounded during the course of the operation.

Execution of 02 Hijackers:

02 hijackers who were captured alive, was bounded and taken to a nearby field, where they were beaten by people who had gathered around them. Shin Bet Chief Avraham Shalom, and the Shin Bet Chief of Operations Ehud Yatom, approached the bound men. Before he left the site, Shalom ordered Yatom to execute them.

“As a result, Yatom and several members of the Shin Bet took the men into a vehicle, and drove them to an isolated place, where the two were beaten to death with rocks and iron bars“.

The Israeli military had censored while blacking out the live coverage of the hijacking in actuality. As a result, initial reports published in Israel and worldwide claimed that all hijackers were killed during the takeover.

Nevertheless, 03 days later the Israeli daily newspaper Hadashot quoted a report from The New York Times, thus bypassing the Israeli military censor, which stated that 02 of the hijackers were captured alive. A few days later Hadashot published on its front page a photograph taken by Alex Levac, in which one of the hijackers was being held alive and fully conscious while taken off the bus. The publication of the photograph caused a public uproar and as a result many in the Israeli public demanded that the circumstances surrounding the deaths of hijackers would be investigated.

The first inquiry:

Just over a week after the hijacking David Shipler, The New York Times correspondent in Israel, filed a report revealing that the daily newspaper Hadashot had a photograph, taken by Alex Levac, of one of the hijackers being led away in handcuffs. Their journalists had positively identified the man in the picture as Majdi Abu Jummaa, aged 18, one of the four dead. The story was re-published around the world.

• The story was surfaced in Israel on Sunday 22nd April by Al HaMishmar of the Mapam party. In a lead story passed by the censor they quoted “authorised senior sources” as saying that there was no alternative to the establishment of a commission of inquiry into the deaths of the two hijackers.

• On 24 April David Shipler was summoned to the office of the director of the Government press office, Mordechai Dolinsky, and was “severely reprimanded.” It was believed that his Israeli press credentials were not revoked only because he was leaving his post shortly anyway.[26]

• On 25 April the weekly HaOlam HaZeh (This World), which had appeared with blank spaces the week before, published on its front page a blurred picture of a man being led away. The editor of the magazine, Uri Avnery, had overcome the censors’ opposition after threatening to take the case to the High Court. Yossi Klein (he), editor of Hadashot, confirmed to correspondents that the man in the picture was not Majdi Abu Jummaa.

• On 27 April Hadeshot was ordered to stop publishing for four days. This punishment, which had not been applied to a Jewish publication for over fifteen years, was due to their reporting that Minister of Defence Arens had set up a committee of inquiry, headed by Reserve General Meir Zorea. This information had been released to the Editors Committee of Israel’s major newspapers on condition that the information was not published. Hadeshot, owned by the publishers of the respected Ha’aretz newspaper, was not a member of the Editors Committee.

Zorea’s report was delivered in secret to the parliamentary Foreign Affairs and Security Committee on 29 May. Its findings were not made public but were said to have “stunned the security establishment”. At the same time Hadashot refuted Moshe Arens’ statement that he had not been at the scene of the hijacking by claiming that their photographer had been standing beside him shortly before he took the picture of Majdi Abu Jummaa. Concerns were also being raised about a television interview that Arens had given shortly after the event when he said: “Whoever plans terrorist acts in Israel must know that he will not get out alive“. The IDF Chief of Staff, Raphael Eitan, had made a similar statement: “Terrorists must know that they will not come out alive from such an operation“.

The Trial:

In 1985 Brigadier General Yitzhak Mordechai, who had led the storming of the bus, and 11 others were put on trial for the killing of the 02 prisoners. They were accused of being among a larger group who beat and kicked the prisoners to death. Witnesses described the General hitting the prisoners with a pistol. He was cleared of the charges, and the charges against the others dropped.

In the spring of 1986 the deputy chief of Shin Bet, Reuven Hazak and two officials Rafi Malka and Peleg Raday, met Prime Minister Shimon Peres and accused their superior, Avraham Shalom, of having ordered the murders and coordinating the testimonies of witnesses in the case against General Mordechai. Peres refused to act on this information and the 03 officials were dismissed from the Shin Bet. They then gave evidence that led Attorney General Yitzhak Zamir to launch a criminal probe against the senior Shin Bet officials accused of covering up the killings.

On hearing the evidence, Zamir opened a police investigation into Shin Bet actions and in particular the role of its director. In May 1986, Zamir was forced to resign amidst accusations of disregarding national security after refusing to end his investigations. His resignation was reported in the international media and Israeli newspapers were able to bypass the Military Censor with revelations about the Shin Bet. It became public that Avraham Shalom was accused of ordering the killing of the 02 prisoners and organising an extensive cover-up which included implicating General Mordechai.

In June 1986 a little-known judge, Yosef Harish, took over as Attorney General and President Chaim Herzog issued a blanket pardon to Shalom and four other Shin Bet officers.

These pardons were challenged in the Supreme court. During the appeal papers were revealed in which Shalom asserted that all his actions were “authorised and approved”. This implicated the Prime Minister at the time of the killings – Yitzhak Shamir. On 6th August 1986, the Supreme Court upheld the pardons, but Attorney General Harish promised there would be an investigation.

Today, in the case of Netanyahu, critics argue that this precedent points in the opposite direction. If anything threatens Israel’s domestic credibility now, they say, it is the sight of a prime minister seeking to escape accountability while still holding power.

With members of the governing coalition headed by Netanyahu now openly calling to defy court rulings, delegitimise judges, and dismantle judicial review, promising to stop only if Netanyahu is pardoned and remains in office; renowned former Chief Justice of Supreme Court Aharon Barak warned last week that something fundamental has failed.

“Checks and balances have collapsed”, he told Israeli media. “The Prime Minister, who controls the government, which controls the Knesset, is in practice ruling the state alone”.

A pardon is not straightforward. Under Israeli law, pardons usually follow legal proceedings, not precede them. The President requires recommendations from the Attorney General and a special advisory committee. The President’s Office called Netanyahu’s 111-page request “interesting” and said it would be reviewed.

Even if granted, a pardon does not force acceptance. If Netanyahu resigns as part of an agreement, the preferred outcome of Maor and about 70% of Israelis, polls show, he will avoid prison in Israel but face potential prosecution abroad the moment he becomes a private citizen.

Accepting a pardon while staying in office would eliminate the immediate threat of trial and preserve his eligibility to remain in or return to power as pressure to step aside evaporates. Any pardon at all would likely remove his most direct danger: conviction and prison.

Netanyahu timed his clemency request well as Gaza receded from headlines – perhaps as a primary motivation for lodging it – and Israeli President Isaac Herzog is likely to face criticism no matter the response he gives.

In any politics so narrow, the value of continuity often outranks function, and a leader often need not improve the system, only promise to guard it (in Netanyahu’s case, by blocking a Palestinian state) or distract people wondering whether they’d have better lives outside of the system altogether.

It’s a contention that Netanyahu’s opposition struggles with. In 2023, protesters who insisted that democracy could not coexist with occupation were pushed aside, a sign that even Netanyahu’s critics defended the foundations of his rule.

Team Maverick.