Flights Grounded at Ben-Gurion, as Airport Workers Join Widespread Strike That Caused Netanyahu to Freeze Judicial Reform

By Yehudit Garmaise

All flights at Ben-Gurion Airport are grounded, announced Pinchas Idan, the chairman of Israel's Airport Authority Committee this morning, just hours before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu relented and said he would postpone his plans until summer to expand the powers of his conservative coalition.

Passengers trying to check into their flights at Ben Gurion heard they were stranded while Idan spoke at a press conference at which Histradut Labor Chairman Arnon Bar-David also announced that most Israeli workers are now striking.

While public transportation workers, supermarkets, and pharmacies are not striking, Bar-David announced that malls, universities, factories, schools, hospitals, banks, and private businesses said they will close in a “historic strike” to “stop the madness.”

All Israeli healthcare workers joined the strike, announced the Israeli Medical Association, which rarely gets involved in politics.

“We have a mission to stop this wave of legislation, and we will win,” Bar-David said. “We will return the state of Israel to sanity.”

Since Jan. 7, thousands of Israelis, starting in Tel Aviv, have taken to the streets on Motzei Shabbos to protest Netanyahu’s plans to expand the powers of the country’s governing parties.  

The already chaotic protests against what liberal Israelis call a “judicial revolution” heated up further after Netanyahu fired Defense Minister Yoav Gallant who called on the prime minister to freeze his plans to decrease the power of the country’s Supreme Court while bolstering the power of the country’s ruling party.

While passengers who want to fly out of Israel are stranded in the airport, the flights already in the sky will be allowed to land at Ben Gurion.

In addition, Turkish Airlines and LOT Polish Airlines announced on Monday afternoon that their flights to Tel Aviv would not be taking off at all, reported the Jerusalem Post, before reporting that Netanyahu said he will freeze his judicial reform that has enraged and roiled most of the country.