The Israeli government moved a step nearer to collapse yesterday, when the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, a key partner in the ruling coalition, announced it was bolting for the opposition benches.
Shas has threatened to quit several times in the past, and its ministers cannot formally resign until next Sunday's cabinet meeting, after which the resignations take 48 hours to come into effect. There is, therefore, still plenty of time for coalition bargaining.
However, the Shas leadership was yesterday sounding more determined than previously. "The decision is final," insisted Mr Eli Yishai, the Minister of Labour who heads the Shas parliamentary faction, after the party's rabbis had convened to approve the resignations. Without the 17 Shas members, the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ehud Barak, will be hard pressed to maintain a parliamentary majority.
Although he has been toying with the possibility of forming a minority government, Mr Barak knows that Shas's departure would place Israel firmly on course for new general elections, and would bring peace moves to a halt at a particularly inopportune time - as Israel and the Palestinians work to finalise a peace treaty, and as the end of an era in Syria with the death of President Hafez al-Assad inevitably changes the tone of Israeli-Syrian contacts.
The Shas dispute with Mr Barak stems from the prime minister's refusal to rubber-stamp large cash injections for the party's ultra-Orthodox school system.
However, the row has escalated along ethnic lines - with the Shas leaders, mainly traditional Sephardi Jews who immigrated from North African and Middle Eastern countries, accusing Mr Barak and his Ashkenazi cohorts, primarily Jews of Western secular origin, of discrimination.
"We joined this government to advance the peace process and heal the domestic rifts," said Mr Yishai yesterday. But Mr Barak, he went on, had made Shas feel unwanted, and the partnership was now over.
The results of the first Palestinian census in Arab East Jerusalem released yesterday showed the number of Palestinians in the city was 331,553 in 1998, well above Israel's estimate. The census predicted the number would reach 496,445 in 2010.