Pro-Sharon party to vote on leaving government

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is facing a vote today by a traditional political ally over whether to desert his minority…

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is facing a vote today by a traditional political ally over whether to desert his minority government.

A decision by the pro-settler National Religious Party (NRP) to quit Mr Sharon's governing coalition would further weaken the right-wing Likud leader in parliament but appeared unlikely to topple him in the short-term.

"Supporters of disengagement apparently have a majority in the Knesset," Social Affairs Minister Zevulun Orlev of the NRP conceded on Army Radio on Monday, using Mr Sharon's term for pulling soldiers and settlers out of Gaza, home to 1.3 million Palestinians.

Mr Orlev remained in the cabinet after his two NRP ministerial colleagues quit in June in protest at the government's approval in principle of Sharon's withdrawal plan.

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The NRP's Central Committee was to vote later in the day on making a final break and the timing for such a move. The party's leader, former minister Mr Effi Eitam, has urged an immediate pullout from the government.

Mr Sharon controls 59 of parliament's 120 seats and would lose four more legislators if the NRP ends the partnership. But he has enjoyed a safety net provided by the main opposition Labour Party, which backs a Gaza withdrawal.

In a show of strength on Sunday, tens of thousands of opponents of the plan to remove all 21 Jewish settlements in Gaza and four of some 120 in the West Bank by the end of 2005 rallied in Jerusalem's central Zion Square.