Israel
El Al Airlines is headquartered in
Israel. The
last hijacking occurred on July 23, 1969,
[19] and no plane departing
Ben Gurion Airport, just outside
Tel Aviv, has ever been hijacked.
[20]
It was in 1972 that
terrorists from the
Japanese Red Army launched an attack that led to the deaths of at least 24 people at Ben Gurion. Since then, security at the airport relies on a number of fundamentals, including a heavy focus on what Raphael Ron, former director of security at Ben Gurion, terms the "human factor", which may be generalized as "the inescapable fact that
terrorist attacks are carried out by people who can be found and stopped by an effective security methodology."
[21]
On December 27, 1985, terrorists simultaneously attacked El Al ticket counters at the
Rome,
Italy and
Vienna,
Austria airports using
machine guns and
hand grenades. Nineteen
civilians were killed and many wounded. In response, Israel developed further methods to stop such massacres and drastically improved security measures around Israeli airports and even promised to provide
plainclothes armed guards at each foreign airport.
[22] The last successful airline-related terrorist attack was in 1986, when a security agent found a suitcase full of explosives during the initial screening process. While the bag did not make it on board, it did injure 13 after detonating in the terminal.
[22]
As part of its focus on this so-called "human factor," Israeli security officers interrogate travelers using racial profiling, singling out those who appear to be Arab based on name or physical appearance.[23] Additionally, all passengers, even those who do not appear to be of Arab descent, are questioned as to why they are traveling to Israel, followed by several general questions about the trip in order to search for inconsistencies.
[19] Although numerous
civil rights groups have demanded an end to the profiling, Israel maintains that it is both effective and unavoidable.
As stated by Ariel Merari, an Israeli terrorism expert, "it would be foolish not to use profiling when everyone knows that most terrorists come from certain ethnic groups. They are likely to be
Muslim and young, and the potential threat justifies inconveniencing a certain
ethnic group."
[24]
Passengers leaving Israel are checked against a computerized list. The computers, maintained by the
Israeli Ministry of Interior, are connected to the
Israeli police and
Interpol in order to catch suspects or others leaving the country illegally.
[25]
Despite such tight security, an incident occurred on November 17, 2002 in which a man apparently slipped through airport security at Ben Gurion Airport with a
pocketknife and attempted to storm the cockpit of
El Al Flight 581 en route from Tel Aviv to
Istanbul,
Turkey. While no injuries were reported and the attacker was subdued by guards hidden among the passengers 15 minutes before the plane landed safely in Turkey, authorities did shut down Ben Gurion for some time after the attack to reassess the security situation and an investigation was opened to determine how the man, an
Israeli Arab, managed to smuggle the knife past the airport security.
[26]
At a conference in May 2008, the
United States Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told
Reuters interviewers that the United States will seek to adopt some of the Israeli security measures at domestic airports. He left his post in January 2009, a mere 6 months after this statement, which may or may not have been enough time to implement them.
[27]
On a more limited focus, American airports have been turning to the Israeli government and Israeli-run firms to help upgrade security in the post-
9/11 world. Israeli officials toured
Los Angeles Airport in November 2008 to re-evaluate the airport after making security upgrade recommendations in 2006, and Ron's company, New Age Security Solutions, based in
Washington, D.C., consults on aviation security at
Boston's Logan International Airport.
[21][28] Calling Ben Gurion "the world’s safest airport,"
Antonio Villaraigosa,
mayor of
Los Angeles, has implemented the Israeli review in order to bring state-of-the-art technology and other tactical measures to help secure LAX, considered to be the state’s primary terrorist target and singled out by the Al Qaeda network.
[29]
Other U.S. airports to incorporate Israeli tactics and systems include
Port of Oakland and the
San Diego County Regional Airport Authority. "The Israelis are legendary for their security, and this is an opportunity to see firsthand what they do, how they do it and, as importantly, the theory behind it," said Steven Grossman, director of aviation at the Port of Oakland. He was so impressed with a briefing presented by the Israelis that he suggested a trip to Israel to the U.S. branch of
Airports Council International in order to gain a deeper understanding of the methods employed by Israeli airport security and law enforcement.
[30]
