Jerusalem - The most ardently pro-peace party in Israel's governing coalition announced last night that it was quitting the government - in order to safeguard peace hopes, David Horovitz reports.
In a bizarre resolution of the coalition crisis, the three cabinet ministers from the 10-strong Meretz party, left-wing, secular and committed to an accelerated peace process with Israel's neighbours, announced that they were leaving the government, stressing they would continue to support it from the opposition benches.
In so doing, Meretz has almost certainly staved off the threat of early elections that the Prime Minister, Mr Ehud Barak, was facing, and paved the way for the return to the coalition today of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, whose ministers resigned on Tuesday. Yesterday's turn of events represents a dramatic victory for Shas, which will now become an even more integral part of government, and which has managed to rid the coalition of its nemesis, the Meretz leader and Minister for Education, Mr Yossi Sarid.
The coalition crisis, which has been rumbling on for weeks, has revolved around Shas's demands for greater funding of its Orthodox school network - demands Mr Sarid had been steadfastly resisting. Shas's spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadiya Yosef has compared Mr Sarid to Hitler.
Explaining their resignations, Meretz ministers said last night they did not want to face the blame for the collapse of the Barak coalition and the likely subsequent interruption of peace efforts. Privately, Meretz leaders said they doubted this crisis was the last, and that Shas could not be relied upon to vote in favour of future peace deals.