Angry Israelis Hit Scrapping of Lavi Warplane

Thousands of angry aircraft workers blocked the main Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway as part of a nationwide protest today against a government decision to scrap the Lavi warplane, putting 3,500 people out of work.

Workers burned tires along the highway linking Israel’s two biggest cities. A traffic jam of several hours caused many tourists to miss their flights at adjacent Ben-Gurion Airport.

The workers declined to carry out a morning threat to prevent planes from taking off or landing. Many protests in other parts of the country ended peacefully after a few hours.

At a meeting, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir told leaders of the workers that the Cabinet is unlikely to back down from its 12-11 vote Sunday to ground the fighter but he left open the possibility, his spokesman told Reuters.

The United States, which paid most of the $1.5 billion invested in the 7-year-old project, pressed for the scrapping of the plane as did defense officials who said the money could be better spent on other military needs.

Military sources said the United States has offered Israel a role in developing the successor to the American F-16 warplane. U.S. Ambassador to Israel Thomas R. Pickering met with Israeli leaders on the eve of the vote.

At factories nationwide, workers involved in Lavi production directed their anger at Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, leader of the Labor Party, who ultimately led the drive to abandon the needle-nosed warplane for alternatives.

Labor and Shamir’s Likud Bloc are partners in a coalition government formed after inconclusive elections in 1984.

Trade Minister Ariel Sharon, a retired general from Shamir’s rightist Likud Bloc, said he will demand that the Cabinet re-examine its decision because of the harm to state-run Israel Aircraft Industries, the country’s largest employer with 20,000 workers.

Likud Cabinet Minister Moshe Arens, an aeronautical engineer who helped father the Lavi, announced that he would resign after the vote but said today that he will put off submitting his resignation in the hope the Cabinet will reconsider its vote.

Cabinet vote. Page 5.