Rifle and grenade attack against an El Al aircraft on the ground

By the end of the decade, Palestinian organizations extended their operations beyond the Middle East and began targeting Israeli civil aviation, the only permanent point of contact between Israel and Europe.

At the airport in Athens, two men opened fire with assault rifles and threw a grenade at an El Al aircraft standing on the tarmac, ready for departure. One passenger was killed, others were wounded; the attackers were arrested by the Greek police. Israel retaliated two days later with a raid on the airport in Beirut.

This was the first in a series of attacks carried out in European airport terminals, which would lead airlines and states to entirely rethink aviation security.