Following up on reports earlier this week that the Israeli government was considering using Israel Defense Forces troops to break a potential port workers strike, the Transportation Minister Israel Katz now says that there are other options as well.

According to this report in the Jerusalem Post, “Should strikes continue, the CEO of the Israel Ports Authority is ready with a plan to divert shipping through other ports. Some cargo would be unloaded at other Mediterranean ports, such as Greece, Cyprus or Turkey, and shipped through the Hadera port on smaller vessels. Cranes would be used to replace Haifa port tugboats, should employees prevent their use. Diversions from the Eilat port would be broken down and unloaded in Jordan’s Aqaba port and brought over by land.”

Meanwhile, the head of the left-wing Meretz party has poked fun at the government plan to deploy strike-breaking troops in the ports, according to this report.  MK  Zahava Gal-On is reported to have said:

“First of all, yeshiva students will be given guns and will be sent to guard illegal outposts like Amona, as the settlers demanded last week.  That way, we can have ‘equal share of the burden’ without having to deal with the issue of putting on a uniform.”

The soldiers who are freed from duty as a result will be sent to the Ashdod Port, she continued. There they can fight “commercial terrorism, like those shipping containers filled with Ikea furniture from the anti-Zionist Sweden. That way we’ll increase border security.”

“Finally,” she continued, “the port workers will be sent to learn core curriculum subjects in the yeshivas that were left empty when their students were sent to the territories.”

“That way, the government can take pride in having begun a program of secular studies in yeshivas, without offending the hareidi community,” she concluded.