Likud, like the present Labor-led Government, was reluctant to press legal charges that might upset the peace talks and relations with Washington.

But the Labor-led Government and other Israelis have found the import of cheap labor a touch embarrassing.

There followed much commentary that the fate of a new secular Labor-led Government was in the end decided by a board of rabbis.

The Coalition defeated the previous Labor-led Government at a general election on 27 November 2010.

But the Labor-led Israeli Government says no, and the rightist opposition says hell, no.

But Mr. Peres, his voice occasionally rising in anger, insisted that the Labor-led Government had lied to nobody.

It is not the first such dispute to plague this Labor-led Government.

Under the departing Labor-led Government, laws requiring Saturday closings were gradually loosened to allow restaurants, movie theaters and shopping centers outside cities to open.

On one hand, the Labor-led Government says it wants to curtail the expansion of settlements championed by its Likud predecessor.

Since taking office a month ago, the Labor-led Government has taken a series of steps to reduce settlement construction and government spending in the occupied territories.