i'm not talking about the depleted uranium used as tail-end ballast.
i'm talking about the drums of chemicals on board.
incase you dont remember, i do!
the plane had problems, but refused to land at the nearest airport and tried to make it to a military base - obviously failing.
a later investigation found it was transporting banned chemicals and didnt want to risk being searched at a civilian airfield.
I haven't found a definitive answer. But the following one, generally disagrees (that there were dangerous/toxic chemicals), but does leave some possibility of doubt.
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/10/02/world/nerve-gas-element-was-in-el-al-plane-lost-in-1992-crash.html
tl;dr
Drums = YES
But UNSAFE/TOXIC = NO
But then official answers "COULD" be wrong or trying to hide stuff. Hence the hopefully slight doubt.
Two quotes from that article:
The Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad reported on Wednesday that the plane was carrying about 50 gallons of dimethyl methylphosphonate, which the paper said was enough to produce 594 pounds of sarin.
The newspaper printed a copy of what it said was a freight document showing that the material came from Solkatronic Chemicals Inc. in Morrisville, Pa., and was sent to the Institute for Biological Research in the Israeli town of Ness Ziona, south of Tel Aviv. The institute's work is a closely guarded secret in Israel.
But a spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the chemical was not toxic and had been ordered by Israel to test gas masks and other filters designed to protect against chemical agents.
Dimethyl methylphosphonate is a schedule 2 substance under the Chemical Weapons Convention*. This flight is timed suspiciously close to the time when it would have become illegal for the US to export DMMP to Israel (a non-ratifying nation and hence banned as a recipient of schedule 2 substances). Looks like the Israelis were exploiting a 'last chance to buy'. Timing in the run-up to the CWC signature and ratification by the US would be politically embarrassing for the US, so it's easy to see why the Israelis were trying to keep as quiet as possible about what they had on board.
The claim that it is not toxic is laughable - Sigma-Aldrich list the following PPE to be used while handling it: Eyeshields, Faceshields, full-face respirator (US), Gloves, multi-purpose combination respirator cartridge (US), type ABEK (EN14387) respirator filter and call it out as "Hazardous to Health". It's an organophosphate, a class of substances that are notorious for their toxicity.
The claim that dimethyl methylphosphonate was for testing gas masks sounds highly suspect, there are plenty of substances suitable for testing gas masks that aren't nerve gas precursors. According to the same report other Sarin precursors were on the plane, one crucial precursor was missing. I'll have a bet the missing precursor was one one that's easy to get - isopropanol. So, more likely this was a half truth. They were going to make Sarin, but they weren't going make enough for military use, only enough for gas mask testing (and perhaps a bit left over for the odd MOSSAD assasination).
*
Schedule 2 substances, in the sense of the Chemical Weapons Convention, are chemicals that can either be used as chemical weapons themselves or used in the manufacture of chemical weapons but that have small-scale applications outside of chemical warfare and so can be legitimately manufactured in small quantities. An example is thiodiglycol, which can be used in the manufacture of mustard agents but is also used as a solvent in inks.
Manufacture must be declared as their production is subject to declaration to the OPCW per Part VII of the "Verification Annex", and they may not be exported to countries that are not party to the Convention