Israeli Aircraft Workers Take to Streets to Protest Scrapping of Lavi Jet

Israel Aircraft Industries’ 20,000 workers reacted in two ways Monday to the government’s decision of the day before to scrap the Lavi jet fighter project. Both were bad political news for Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and his party, the Labor Alignment, which led the campaign to ground the Lavi.

Hundreds of workers took angrily to the streets, burning tires, blocking the main Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway, brandishing placards and shouting at anyone who would listen. “Peres: son of a whore!” workers chanted as they marched on Labor headquarters in Tel Aviv. “Peres go home!”

Others seemed stunned. Like Yossi, a 35-year-old engineer and father of three, they went to the factory but did little in the way of work. Two reporters almost overlooked him as they wandered through a cavernous hangar Monday afternoon.

Pretending to Work

Yossi--military censorship prevents the use of his full name--was sitting under a partial mock-up of the ill-fated aircraft, poking unenthusiastically at a bundle of wires hanging down in front of him. He was one of a handful of people in the once-bustling hangar, and he was the only one even pretending to work.

“I’m just mourning,” said Yossi, who has worked on the Lavi project for most of his seven years at the factory. “It’s like losing a baby.”

Employees are under company orders to make no political statements, yet Yossi said he found it “very strange that the Labor Party wanted to cancel the Lavi.”

It was a Peres proposal, approved by a slender 12-11 majority in the Cabinet, with one minister abstaining, that doomed the needle-nosed fighter once billed as the cornerstone of Israel’s defense deterrent into the next century.

Israel Aircraft, which is government-owned, says the decision will cost up to 6,000 jobs, though the Defense Ministry said Monday that it plans no dismissals pending clarification of other aspects of the decision that are meant to steer replacement business to the firm.

The workers said they will continue to pressure the government to reconsider its decision, but they were secretive about their plans.

According to the Hebrew-language newspaper Hadashot, the workers intend to keep their 50,000 children home today, the first day of the new school year, and take them instead to the aircraft factory for a “last look” at the Lavi.

Several right-wing politicians called for another vote on the Lavi. Moshe Arens, a Cabinet minister without portfolio representing Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s rightist Likud Bloc, said he will hold off on his threatened resignation as long as there is a chance that the decision will be reconsidered.

Arens, who has been called the “spiritual father” of the Lavi, had said Sunday that he would resign rather than accept a share of the responsibility for what he said was “a major mistake.”

An Israel Aircraft delegation that met with Shamir on Monday afternoon said the prime minister had left open the possibility of another vote, but few analysts here took the prospect seriously.

“Unless there is a change of mind in the Labor Party, there is no purpose in a re-vote,” Shamir spokesman Avi Pazner said.

Nevertheless, he forecast “a long war of nerves.”

The fact that Likud Finance Minister Moshe Nissim joined Labor ministers in voting against the Lavi--he was the only minister to cross party lines in the decision--apparently made little difference to the workers, even though Labor is known as the party of the working man.

Nor did the fact that Peres--during a term as deputy defense minister early in his political career--had helped found the company, and that he now argued that his proposal to scrap the Lavi in favor of other projects was intended “to save IAI, and not to harm it.”

“They are furious at the Labor Party,” a key Shamir aide said after the prime minister’s meeting with the Israel Aircraft delegation.

The workers “have a high appreciation” for Shamir’s efforts to save the project, he said, and “of course, this is a situation that tends very much to benefit the Likud.”

The aide said that if Israel Aircraft’s 20,000 employees, their spouses and adult children would vote as a bloc, they could elect two or three members of the next Parliament. In light of the present stalemate between Peres’ Labor Alignment and Shamir’s Likud Bloc in the 120-seat Knesset, or Parliament, a shift of two or three votes could make an important difference.

“It can tip the election,” the aide said. Labor and Likud are joined in an unusual “national unity” coalition, but elections are scheduled for November of next year, and the date could easily be moved up depending on the political situation. Chaim Kaufman, chairman of the Likud faction in the Knesset, urged Monday that the party take advantage of the Lavi issue to force elections now.

Peres aides predicted that the storm will pass quickly and that once it passes, the workers and the electorate generally will realize that he acted for the good of the country.

“The key issue,” a source close to Peres said, “is whether (the protests) will continue beyond the next few days.”

Peres said after the vote Sunday, “This was an infinitely difficult decision for me . . . because this is a plant which is very dear to me.”

But he said that even under the austerity budget Israel Aircraft has submitted, the Lavi program would have cost nearly $500 million a year in each of the next 10 years.

“The money,” he said, “would have to come from three sources: the Americans, who rejected the program, the Defense Ministry, which has other priorities, and the Finance Ministry, which contends that it would destroy the economy.”

U.S. Position Shifted

The U.S. government, which had funded most of the Lavi’s $1.5-billion development costs, turned against the project as costs soared far beyond estimates. The Reagan Administration praised Sunday’s decision to scrap the program.

The Israeli press appeared to be generally supportive of what it said was a difficult decision, although some newspapers agreed that Labor may suffer politically for its stand.

“The correct decision on the cancellation of the Lavi project made yesterday by the Cabinet was extremely late,” the leftist Al Hamishmar said in an editorial, “but a late decision is better than the continuation of an illusion that is accompanied by enormous and pointless investments.”

The independent Maariv said the decision was difficult and criticized “the decision-making process from the start to its bitter end.”

It said that if Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin, of Labor, had fought against the program nearly three years ago “instead of saying . . . that we had passed the point of no return, it would have been decided at the appropriate time and at relatively low cost.”

‘20 Years of Euphoria’ End

Jerusalem Post columnist Shlomo Maoz said the decision “brings to a close the 20 years of euphoria that started with the victory in the Six-Day War (of 1967). For the first time it has been admitted that Israel is not a superpower as some politicians would have had us believe. . . . This is a climb down towards becoming a more normal nation.”

But Israel Aircraft workers saw it differently. Uri, 38, an electronics engineer who has worked for six years on the Lavi, said, “What hurts me most is that I cannot find my future in the kind of Israel that our government is leading us to.”

He said he does not believe that there is not enough money to build “the best airplane in the world.” If you want to buy an expensive table, he said, “you sacrifice for it--you don’t go buy a cheaper table.”