Housing Minister Effie Eitam and a second official from the pro-settler National Religious Party (NRP) resigned from the government yesterday in protest over the Cabinet's approval of a Gaza withdrawal plan.
The departure of the NRP would deprive Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of his parliamentary majority, but not bring him down.
Sharon's government has been in limbo since the Cabinet's historic vote on Sunday to pull out of Gaza by the end of next year. The decision could lead to new political alliances, or even elections, in the coming months.
The government survived two no-confidence motions in parliament on Monday night. NRP legislators were absent from the floor during the vote, a sign of the party's indecision.
Eitam and Yitzhak Levy, a deputy minister, had said they could not sit in a Cabinet that intended to pull down settlements, party sources said.
Zevulun Orlev, the labor and welfare minister who leads a more moderate wing of the party, planned to stay in the Cabinet, the sources said.
If the party pulled out of the coalition, it would leave Sharon with 55 seats in the 120-member Knesset. Sharon would likely court Labor, his main coalition partner in his first term, to replace the NRP, though the party is divided over whether to join.
For now, Labor is providing a "safety net" for Sharon in parliament. In Monday's votes, Labor legislators abstained, allowing the motions to be defeated.
"We will decide from day to day," said party leader Shimon Peres.
In Sunday's meeting, the Cabinet approved a Gaza withdrawal in principle, but in a nod to hardliners decided that no settlements would be removed without another vote, expected to be held by March 1. Meanwhile, the government will lay the groundwork for the settlement removals.
Sharon's ``disengagement plan,'' includes the removal of all 21 Gaza settlements and four small West Bank settlements.
Meanwhile, Israel plans to shut down a major industrial zone on its border with the Gaza Strip where thousands of Palestinians work, a senior political said yesterday.
Vice Premier Ehud Olmert was quoted as saying the decision to close the Erez zone and relocate its factories to southern Israel followed government approval of the Gaza pullout plan
The Erez plants have been a rare example of Israeli-Palestinian cooperation and some 4,000 Palestinians are employed there.
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