Customs Officials End Strike at Lydda

Customs officials at Lydda Airport returned to their jobs today after a Tel Aviv district court ordered them yesterday to return to work under penalty of prison terms. The order marked the first time in the history of Israel that a court intervened in a labor dispute. Copies of the court order were delivered by messengers on scooters to the 135 customs inspectors at the airport who held a hurried meeting and decided to resume work.

It was noted that the back-to-work order was issued only against customs officials at the airport and not against similar inspectors at the Ashdod port, where the continued walkout has brought a paralysis of the harbor. Ships scheduled to load or unload are being diverted to Haifa. The Lydda inspectors have a contract which does not terminate until next April.

In a related development, a spokesman for 400 Israeli civil servants working for the military government in Judea and Samaria in the occupied West Bank said they would all quit their jobs and return to positions from which they are on loan to the West Bank military command if more military trials are held of strikers. The spokesman. Yisrael Lippel, made the announcement after an emergency meeting last night of the civil servants held in the headquarters of the Histadrut in Jerusalem.

The issue developed when the military command refused to rescind suspended sentences against 26 customs officials among the civil servants who had struck in sympathy with their colleagues at Lydda Airport and Ashdod. The 26 strikers returned to work when they were threatened with implementation of sentences previously suspended. A demand was approved at the meeting, supported by the other customs inspectors, that the sentences be dropped entirely and that such civil servants should not be subject to military law.