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September 24, 2004/Tishri 9 5765, Vol. 57, No. 4
Strike grounds planes, closes banks
DAN BARON
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
JERUSALEM - From tourists to regular citizens going about their daily business, from the sick to the dead awaiting burial, hundreds of thousands of Israelis have been stranded by a strike.
As of Sept. 21, Ben-Gurion International Airport had grounded flights and govern-ment ministries were shut down. Banks and financial markets were closed for business. Only skeleton crews staffed hospitals and even burial societies put down their shovels.
Fearing an economic paralysis that could cost Israel an estimated $214 million a day, the Finance Ministry petitioned Israel's Labor Court to issue back-to-work injunctions.
But the Histadrut labor federation, which ordered the open-ended strike to protest nonpayment of salaries to thousands of municipal workers, vowed not to budge.
"I used to believe in the prime minister, the Knesset, and the courts, yet when I realized there are Israelis hungry for bread, I decided to act," the Histadrut's chief, Amir Peretz, said.
But the labor action, with 400,000 workers staying home, could prove hazardous for at least 13 kidney patients from Assuta Hospital in Tel Aviv who were marooned while on a rare vacation in Croatia.
"These people need dialysis three times a week," Sari Goldhart, a nurse accom-panying the group, told Channel One television by phone. "If they do not get back to Israel, they could die."
One Air Canada flight managed to land at Ben-Gurion before the sanctions went into effect, but other planes were turned away.
The Labor Court was expected to try to persuade Peretz to order the international airport and several seaports to operate as a goodwill concession.
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