Israel's Knesset (parliament) approved on Monday a new coalition government that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon hopes to form to promote his Gaza withdrawal plan.

According to an official tally, the lawmakers voted 58 to 56 in favor of the alliance between Sharon's Likud party, opposition Labor and a small religious faction United Torah Judaism.

The new cabinet which gives Sharon a parliamentary majority was sworn in immediately after the vote.
 
With 66 of the 120 parliament seats, the new cabinet has eight Labor ministers, with leader Shimon Peres taking the office of Sharon's second vice deputy and Ofir Pines, the leader of Labor's young guard, as the new interior minister.

The United Torah Judaism which has five MPs, agreed to join the coalition without being handed any portfolio.

Sharon lost his parliamentary majority last summer when pro-settler parties withdrew over his plan to evacuate all 21 Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip and four small enclaves in the northern West Bank.

(Xinhua News Agency January 11, 2005)