Ariel Sharon's coalition faced possible collapse on Monday when a key far-right partner said it was considering walking out in protest against a cabinet vote approving the Israeli prime minister's Gaza withdrawal plan.  

But the government defeated two parliamentary no-confidence motions brought by small opposition parties, the latest in a series in recent months.

The plan was passed by 14 votes to seven on Sunday but only after Sharon placated mutinous ministers in his right-wing Likud Party by agreeing not to evacuate Jewish settlements for at least nine months and then in four phases each requiring a vote.

By bowing to future votes of his unruly government for each phase of withdrawal, Sharon effectively left in the air the fate of the 21 settlements in the Gaza Strip and four of 120 in the West Bank he said he intended to remove by the end of 2005.

Palestinians welcome any pullout from occupied Gaza, but object to plans endorsed by US President Bush for Israel to keep parts of the West Bank in return. The militant Hamas group called the cabinet decision "a big trick."

Israel said it fired missiles on Palestinian guerrilla base south of Beirut on Monday in response to rocket fire at an Israeli navy ship in the Mediterranean earlier in the day.

"This evening the (Israeli military) targeted a terrorist base located near Beirut that is used as a platform for terrorist activity in Lebanon," the army said in a statement.

In Beirut, a Lebanese security source said the attack was aimed at an area in which the radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine -- General Command, has a large base.

There were no reported casualties.

Sharon was clinging to a one-seat majority in the 120-member parliament after firing two ultra-rightist ministers to secure the cabinet vote, capping weeks of maneuvering and brinkmanship.

Leaders of the pro-settler National Religious Party (NRP) were split on whether to quit the coalition. Rabbis who help draft NRP policy declined to state their opinion later on Monday before a final decision by the party's parliamentary group, Israeli media reported.

Israelis tired of political turmoil

If the NRP left, the coalition would drop to an untenable 55 seats. This would force Sharon to court the center-left Labor Party, which favors his plan, or go for an early election, which weary Israelis do not want after three in the past five years.

"We hope the NRP will stay, and even if the NRP does quit, the prime minister has a clear political alternative to obtain a majority," Sharon's chief of staff, Dov Weisglass, told Army Radio in a clear reference to Labor.

NRP deputy Shaul Yahalom said while many colleagues opposed leaving Gaza, "some say that if we leave the coalition, Labor will join immediately and the results will be worse."

Sharon's government defeated the two no-confidence motions sponsored by leftist and ultra-Orthodox parties which focused on its handling of social issues rather than the Gaza plan itself.

Sharon would have been in more peril if Labor, with 19 deputies, had submitted a no-confidence motion threatened but later withdrawn.

But Labor showed no inclination to throw Sharon a lifeline before a decision by the attorney general, not expected before mid-June, on whether to indict him in a bribery scandal.

In Cairo, Israeli officials said after talks between Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak they were "very close" to a deal on Egypt deploying more police along Gaza's frontier to stop Palestinian arms-smuggling.

Cairo's hand is indispensable to any future Israeli troop pullback from a Gaza border corridor Israel says it will leave only after a "reliable alternative arrangement" with Egypt.

Palestinian President Yasser Arafat wrote to Mubarak saying he accepted his demand for Palestinian security reforms as a condition for Egypt to help stabilize Gaza if Israelis withdraw, Palestinian officials said.

But the extent of reforms agreeable to Arafat was not known. He has previously thwarted such steps, complicating US-led efforts to revive peacemaking between Palestinians and Israel.

Bush approved Sharon's blueprint to "disengage" from conflict with Palestinians as a potential means of reviving the US-backed peace "road map."

Polls show most Israelis are behind Sharon, seeing Gaza as a bloody liability. Some 7,500 settlers live in heavily-protected enclaves among 1.3 million Palestinians.

(China Daily via agencies, June 8, 2004)