Most people remember the Dawson's Field hijackings for the spectacle of three empty jetliners blown up in the Jordanian desert. The more obscure and critical negotiation happened later. On September 30, 1970, after days of fighting between the Jordanian army and Palestinian fedayeen in what became Black September, King Hussein's government reached a strained deal with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The PFLP, led by George Habash, agreed to release its remaining 56 hostages. In exchange, Jordan released seven Palestinian female prisoners and a handful of other detainees. The released hostages were driven to Amman and handed over to the International Red Cross. The drama of the explosions had passed; the gritty politics of survival remained.
The context was a civil war within a hijacking crisis. Earlier in September, the PFLP had hijacked four airliners, forcing three to land at Dawson's Field, a remote airstrip they renamed "Revolution Airport." They held over 300 people, mostly Jewish and American passengers, as pawns to demand the release of Palestinian militants from European prisons. Jordan, embarrassed by this state-within-a-state, moved militarily against the PFLP. The hostages became trapped between the Jordanian army and their captors. The deal on September 30 was a face-saving measure for a guerrilla group under severe military pressure, not a pure victory.
The event is often overshadowed by the earlier destruction of the planes, a dramatic media event. But the quiet release of the final hostages marked a pivotal shift. It signaled the imminent defeat of the Palestinian factions in Jordan and their expulsion from the kingdom. It demonstrated that even the most audacious acts of aerial terrorism had a limited political shelf life when a host state decided to exert its force.
The impact was a reconfiguration of Middle Eastern militancy. Defeated in Jordan, the PFLP and other groups relocated to Lebanon, setting the stage for that country's future destabilization. The tactic of spectacular hijackings continued, but the Dawson's Field episode proved there was a limit. A government, even an Arab one sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, would not tolerate a direct challenge to its sovereignty. The deal was not about the hostages' value, but about the PFLP's need for an exit.