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jerusalem  |  A strike by Foreign Ministry workers recently was suspended and negotiations initiated to resolve the dispute, but not before causing diplomatic embarrassments worldwide.

The work slowdown began six months ago over a pay dispute. It progressed to the point where Foreign Ministry employees severed routine contacts with Israel’s secret service, withheld political estimates and position papers, restricted contacts with the Prime Minister’s Office and the National Security Council, and stopped sending diplomatic cables and providing logistics for visits by Israeli dignitaries abroad.

Employees also started coming to work in jeans and sandals rather than their regular business attire.

Just a few days before the strike’s suspension, it appeared workers weren’t going to assist the Washington visit of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who arrived in the United States this week for peace talks. However, a temporary agreement was reached.

In the last six months there has been a string of diplomatic gaffes involving high-level foreign dignitaries.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov (right) appears in June with Israeli counterpart Avigdor Lieberman; the labor dispute nearly derailed the trip when nobody came to pick Lavrov up from the airport. photo/jta/flash90/miriam alster

The Estonian president’s wife was left stranded at a restaurant outside Jerusalem when her Foreign Ministry driver disappeared. An irate President Toomas Hendrik Ilves retaliated by visiting Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah instead of laying a wreath at the Jerusalem tomb of Zionist founding father Theodor Herzl.

Similarly, a hired car had to be arranged when Bulgarian Foreign Minister Nikolay Mladenov was abandoned at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and museum.

Worse, there was no full protocol reception or even a car for Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov when he arrived at Ben Gurion Airport in late June. The Russians almost canceled the visit, and Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon had to drive in his own car to meet Lavrov at the airport.

Only an 11th-hour appeal from Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman saved Netanyahu from suffering consequences of the work slowdown for the peace summit.

“Given the importance of the occasion and our sense of national responsibility, we will probably allow our employees to provide all the necessary services,” said Hanan Goder, chairman of the workers’ committee.

Just a few days earlier the diplomats, already barely on speaking terms with the Prime Minister’s Office, the Treasury and the Mossad intelligence agency, threatened to suspend ties with the Israel Defense Forces.

The threat against the IDF came after Netanyahu, concerned he might be left in the lurch without any support staff, approached the IDF’s procurement division in Washington for possible help with his visit. That led to an angry letter from the Foreign Ministry workers’ committee to IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi urging him not to allow the government to use the army as strike breakers. To do so “would violate democratic norms,” the strike leaders argued.

The last-minute agreement with the ministry staff averted that.

Netanyahu also was in the thick of the labor dispute after his July meeting with President Barack Obama in Washington. At the time, Israeli diplomats suspended their slowdown in response to an appeal from Histadrut trade union boss Ofer Eini, who promised to take up their cause. But Eini failed to deliver in negotiations.

Burned once, the diplomatic staff adamantly refused to provide the logistics for an ensuing Netanyahu trip, to Greece in mid-August. So the prime minister asked Mossad officials in Athens to take care of the arrangements, which they did.

The normally urbane diplomats went ballistic.

“We took it very badly,” Goder said. “The last time a security organization was used to break a strike in Israel was with the big seaman’s strike in 1951.”

In retaliation, the Foreign Ministry threatened to withhold payment of expenses — such as rent and school fees — to Mossad officials working out of Israeli diplomatic missions abroad. At one point the ministry even considered withholding salaries, but relented for legal reasons.

More significantly, for the first time in Israel’s history, the Foreign Ministry severed routine contacts with the Mossad, although workers’ committee member Yaacov Livne said that behind the scenes, exchanges vital for state security have continued.

Foreign Ministry employees allege that the Mossad agents who have been subverting their strike get paid twice as much as the ministry diplomats for doing the same work, facing the same security dangers and serving in the same difficult postings. Goder said the salaries in the diplomatic corps are so low that when he showed Treasury officials the pay tables for Foreign Ministry employees, the officials thought he had made up the figures.

Just before the strike was suspended, new slowdowns were added. Workers decided that no visitors would be allowed into the Foreign Ministry except those going to see Lieberman or Ayalon; Israeli diplomatic missions abroad would not receive visitors; there would be no documentation or other services for foreign diplomats in Israel; Israeli exporters would not receive any Foreign Ministry assistance; and consular services in large centers, including New York, Los Angeles, Brussels and Paris, would be by prior phone appointment only.

A spokesman for the Israel Consulate in San Francisco said that, for now, there is no disruption or operational change in the consular department or services.