JERUSALEM (AFP) - Israel was paralysed by a general strike as trade unions imposed a shutdown in protest at local authorities' failure to pay thousands of staff amid a budget clampdown by the right-wing government.
Banks, post offices and government ministries were all shut while trains were not running.
Ben Gurion international airport, near Tel Aviv, was also closed after the open-ended strike began at 8:30 am (0530 GMT).
Aircraft of state-owned flagcarrier El Al, which had already arrived in Israeli airspace, were forced to divert to Cyprus, Austria and Hungary after striking flight controllers said they could not guarantee their safe landing.
The Israeli-controlled border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt was closed, Egyptian officials said, but Jordanian officials said both Allenby and King Hussein Bridge crossings remained open.
Schools were open but part of the private banking sector joined the strike in a show of solidarity.
"The strike will continue as long as the local authority and religious council workers do not receive the wages that they are due," the head of the Histadrut trade union confederation, Amir Peretz, told public radio.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon hit back by accusing the unions of inflicting "great suffering" on the general public.
"I call on the Histadrut to show national responsibility and to stop this unjustified strike which is causing great suffering to the citizens of Israel," Sharon told members of his right-wing Likud party in a speech in Tel Aviv.
The staff of 57 municipalities -- some 18,000 employees in all -- have not been paid for several months. Workers for a further 17 local councils have yet to receive their August wages.
The arrears are the result of sharp cuts in central government funding for local authorities, although Sharon's Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu charges that the municipalities are also guilty of mismanagement.
Government and local authorities' representatives resumed talks with union leaders in the late afternoon but sources said that there had been no immediate breakthrough.
The main employers' organizations, the Manufacturers' Association and the Federation of Israeli Chambers of Commerce, were also expected to file for a court injunction against the strike.
Sharon's chief of staff Ilan Cohen said that "every possible effort would be exerted to show that the government is not indifferent to the fate of (municipal) employees that haven't been paid."
But he added that the government "is also in dire straits, municipalities must improve their management."
It is a line that has been hammered across repeatedly by Netanyahu as he seeks to clear the way for yet more swinging budget cuts next year.
"Now the Histadrut's real face has been revealed -- they are calling a strike because they want a strike," the finance minister wrote in the mass-circulation Yediot Aharonot daily.
"The money, after all, has already been transferred, and all the local authority employees can be paid already," he claimed.
Sharon met with Netanyahu and Interior Minister Avraham Poraz Sunday to try to avert the strike with an offer to transfer half of the unpaid wages in exchange for the local councils' commitment to adopt a financial adjustment plan.
But the unions squarely rejected the proposal.
Netanyahu's austerity moves have already sparked a spate of industrial action in Israel. Municipal gravediggers went on strike briefly earlier this year, prompting a call from rabbis for the bereaved to bury their own dead, while port employees also staged industrial action.