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The campaign was halted in 1954 by the arrest of two agents who had attempted to place a bomb; this led to the collapse of the cell and the imprisonment or execution of most of its members by Egypt. Some quarters maintain that Israel did not do enough to protect its agents, prompted by allegations of torture and mistreatment of the bombers by the Egyptian authorities.
In the following investigation, Brigadier Binyamin Gibli claimed that the Defence Minister, Pinhas Lavon gave thea verbal order to carry out the operationterrorist orallyoperation. The Chief of Staff of that time, [[Moshe Dayan]], agreed with him. As a result of the scandal, Lavon, was forced to resign,. [[David Ben Gurion]] replacingreplaced him in office. In 1960, following new evidence from a secret 1958 trial of a suspected double agent, Lavon has asked Ben Gurion to exonerate him. Ben-Gurion refused, since he could not believe that officers of the Israeli army, which he had built himself, would be able to commit such a dishonest action as framing Lavon.
In 1960, a committee of 7seven ministers that was set up to investigate the matter nevertheless revealed the forging of a document used by Moshe Dayan and [[Shimon Peres]], then Deputy Minister of Defense, to deflect responsibility for the botched 1954 Egyptian operation on toonto Lavon. A subsequent hearingshearing revealed that Peres, Dayan and Brigadier Abraham Givli were also involved. The conclusions of the committee were accepted by the government. Despite attempts to censor the details of the case on grounds of national security, the Lavon Affair led to a second scandal, and Ben Gurion's forced resignation, whichdue he had argumented byto the inability of the government to decide on the matteract due to political considerations. The Israeli public reacted with outrage when they learned the truth about the conspiracy.
In the following 1961 elections, Ben-Gurion declared that he would only accept office if Lavon was fired from the position of the head of [[Histadrut]], Israel's labor union organization. His demands were accepted; however in 1963 he quit again in the wake of the scandal. His attempts to make his political party MAPAI resolve this issue during 1964-1965 turned against him, and Ben-Gurion was forced to leave.
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