Spying on us

Here is a nice story for the day.

As we all know 15th May 1948, neighboring Arab countries invaded Israel from all sides, in what became known as the War of Independence. The day before, Israel declared independence from Britain as the Mandate ended. Knowing that there was going to be a war, many airlines stopped flights to Israel. TWA stopped flights as of 19th March 1948. TWA renewed flights to Israel, after the war, on the 5th July 1949.

So a year later, a TWA flight left America for Israel in September 1950. In October 1950, and probably before that, the route was Rome - Athens - Tel Aviv, as can be seen from the image below.

The flight arrived in Rome, Italy and then departed on 18th September with 14 passengers and was scheduled to arrive at LYDDA airport, near Tel Aviv, that same day. Unfortunately due to engine trouble, the plane was forced to land in CAIRO.

Remember that September 1950 was barely a year and half after the ceasefire of the War of Independence and Israel and Egypt were not exactly on speaking terms. Egypt could not really come to terms with the fact that they were unable to wipe the Jewish state off the map. If they had, I wouldn't be writing this blog.

One could ask why would the flight land in Cairo, that seems very off route, if there was an Athens leg. One source said that the flight was forced to land in Egyptian occupied Gaza, which is highly unlikely as in 1950, as today, there is no landing strip there.

In Cairo, the mail bags were taken off the plane by the Egyptian Military. On board was mail originating from New York, Boston, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Madrid and Rome. The Egyptian authorities refused to release the mail. Actually as of the 20th they hadn't even released the plane itself. Israeli authorities approached the International Postal Union and protested at the confiscation of Israel-bound mail.

There were about 19 mail bags on this flight. One source said that the mail was only released as a result of American threats. Mail was only returned to the sender after being heavily censored trying to get information. Mail began to arrive in Israel in February 1951, some six months later.

What is also puzzling here is that there were 14 passengers aboard, what happened to them while in Cairo? A question that I don't have an answer for. Anyone?