Coalition partner chief quits cabinet

"The cabinet decision (to approve the Gaza pullout) offers Hamas a terrorist state on a plate, at the expense of the blood of Jews," Housing Minister Effi Eitam charged in his letter to Sharon.

A party colleague, junior minister Yitzhak Levy, also submitted his resignation in protest at the cabinet's decision on Sunday to approve Sharon's so-called disengagement plan.

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"The flag of the Land of Israel has been lowered to half-mast in your days," Levy, who was not a member of the cabinet, wrote in his resignation letter.

But another of the NRP's six deputies, Welfare Minister Zevulun Orlev, has decided to remain in the cabinet. Orlev was reported to be furious at his colleagues' decision and had urged them to reconsider.

Public radio said that despite Eitam and Levy's exit from the government, the party would continue to support Sharon's coalition in parliament.

Their departure comes just days after Sharon sacked two members of another party which supports Jewish settlement on Palestinian land, the National Union, on Friday.

While their dismissal ensured him a victory in cabinet on Sunday, that left him with the theoretical support of just 62 of the 120 deputies in the Knesset even before Eitam and Levy's resignations.

Eitam had savaged the cabinet decision to back Sharon's disengagement plan, which envisages the evacuation of all 21 of the settlements in the Gaza Strip and another four isolated enclaves in the northern West Bank, as "one of the blackest decisions ever taken by the Israeli government."

But Sunday's agreement also stipulated that no pullouts from Gaza would take place before March 2005 at the earliest and each phase of the evacuation process would be subject to a separate vote in parliament.

Senior figures in the party had called for the ministers to remain in place for at least the next three months in order to oppose the plan from a position of strength.