ISRAEL: A far-right minister resigned from the cabinet of Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, yesterday in protest against his Gaza pullout plan, weakening the ruling coalition and jeopardising its parliamentary majority.
The Housing Minister, Mr Effi Eitam, and the deputy minister, Mr Yitzhak Levy, tendered their resignations to Mr Sharon but their party, the pro-settler National Religious Party (NRP), made no immediate decision on whether to abandon the coalition.
NRP legislators said they were weighing a compromise proposal to stay in the government for at least another three months despite Sunday's cabinet approval in principle of Mr Sharon's plan for evacuating all settlements in Gaza and four of the 120 in the West Bank.
That would grant Mr Sharon a reprieve from a breakdown of his coalition, which would force him to reshape his government or call early elections.
"As a comrade in arms, a cabinet colleague and a brother of the Jewish people, I call upon you Mr Prime Minister: 'Stop! Don't hand the country over to terror,' " Mr Eitam, a former army officer, wrote in his resignation letter.
Mr Sharon's government has been in political crisis since his cabinet voted 14-7 in favour of a watered-down version of his proposal to "disengage" from conflict with the Palestinians. He won a cabinet majority only after placating mutinous ministers from his right-wing Likud party by agreeing not to evacuate settlements for at least nine months.
- (Reuters)