Israel Unveils Artillery Weapons

Israel unveiled a collection of self-propelled artillery weapons yesterday and staged a midnight dress rehearsal of the military parade to take place May 7 in observance of the nation’s 25th anniversary. The weapons, mostly of American make, though including a few Russian pieces captured from Egypt during the Six-Day War and “improved” according to Israeli specifications, will all be in the parade.

They were displayed to newsmen at Jerusalem’s newly opened Atarot Airport which is the staging area for next Monday’s parade. A military spokesman said the high mobility of these weapons offset Israel’s numerical disadvantage in combat with the Arab armies. He noted that during the war of attrition with Egypt which ended with the Aug. 1970 cease-fire. Israel was forced to rely more on aircraft than it will have to in the future.

The parade rehearsal through downtown Jerusalem brought throngs into the streets, normally almost deserted at that late hour. Coffee bars and cafes stayed open late and crowds, mostly youngsters, lined the darkened streets and cheered the tanks rumbling by and the marching infantry men.

A false bomb scare forced a British European Airways jet to return to Lod Airport shortly after its take-off this morning and led to the search of two other BEA planes on the ground. The airliner was recalled after an anonymous telephone caller claimed that a bomb had been placed on a BEA plane but didn’t say which one. All the planes were thoroughly searched but no bomb was found.

A 24-year-old Israeli youth was remanded in custody for five days by a Haifa court yesterday after he breached the supposedly impregnable security surrounding the Queen Elizabeth 2 and boarded the giant liner at Haifa port with a phony pass. Meir Miarch of Ashdod fooled Israeli and British security guards on the dock and gangway by flashing an insurance identity card which they apparently mistook for a boarding pass.