The dirty trick

It referred to an attempt by Shimon Peres to form a government made up of the left-wing factions and the ultra-orthodox parties.

Peres' Israeli Labor Party had been part of the second national unity government with its traditional rival, Yitzhak Shamir's Likud, since 1988.

[2] Peres drafted a secret agreement with Aryeh Deri and Shas to support the dissolution of the national unity government.

[8] Speaking in a rally at the Yad Eliyahu Arena, Rabbi Elazar Shach, Degel HaTorah's spiritual leader, called on his public not to tolerate a coalition with the secular, Kashrut-violating left, "eaters of hares and swine".

However, on that morning two Agudat Yisrael MKs, Eliezer Mizrahi and Avraham Verdiger, were absent[13] due to the Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson refusing to support any concession of Israeli territory.

[21] Yitzhak Rabin named the affair "the dirty trick" in an interview, saying "All this bluff and corruptibility which came into the Israeli political life in an attempt to form a narrow government failed not only tactically but also conceptually".

It was later adopted by the Labor Party in its 1992 elections campaign (when it was led by Rabin), and is considered to have been instrumental to its victory.

[25] The affair also led to an electoral reform and a direct elections format for the position of Prime Minister.