Minister quits Sharon cabinet

A far-right minister quit Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's cabinet yesterday in protest against his Gaza pullout plan, weakening the ruling coalition and jeopardising its parliamentary majority.

Housing Minister Effi Eitam and deputy minister 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 lawmakers 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 120 in the West Bank.

That would grant Mr Sharon, a former general once considered godfather of the settler movement, a temporary 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 the grips of a political crisis since his cabinet voted 14-7 in favour of a watered-down version of his US-backed proposal to "disengage" from conflict with the Palestinians.

Mr Sharon won a cabinet majority only after placating mutinous ministers from his rightist Likud party by agreeing not to evacuate settlements for at least nine months and then in four phases each requiring a vote.

But it was not enough to satisfy far-right ministers who reject the blueprint as a reward for "Palestinian terror".

If the plan is carried out, it would mark Israel's first removal of settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, territories captured in the 1967 Middle East war.

Polls show a majority of Israelis willing to part with Gaza's hard-to-defend settlements, where 7,500 Jews live cloistered from 1.3 million Palestinians. But Mr Sharon's Likud rejected his pullout plan in a May 2 referendum.

An NRP departure would destroy Mr Sharon's one-seat majority in parliament. The main opposition Labour Party, which backs territorial concessions, has signalled it may be willing to join a "unity" government to help carry out the evacuation plan.

But Labour is unlikely to throw Mr Sharon a lifeline before a decision by the attorney general, not expected until mid-June, on whether to indict him in a bribery scandal.

Under the revised Gaza plan, Israel said it intends to close its main industrial zone on the Gaza border, leaving thousands of Palestinians jobless. No date was given for the closure.

Palestinians accused Mr Sharon of planning to heap more hardship on Gaza, where violence has increased of late as both sides seek to claim any Israeli pullback as a victory.