Almost all of Yasser Arafat's 18 Palestinian cabinet ministers offered to resign last night, following a series of recent reports into corruption within the Palestinian Authority.
The collective offer of resignation, submitted at a cabinet meeting yesterday, was signed by all 16 ministers present.
One of the absentees was Mr Yasser Abed Rabbo, the information minister, who is one of Mr Arafat's key aides.
The other was Mr Nabil Sh'ath, the planning minister and leading peace negotiator, who was pinpointed in the most recent corruption report as meriting investigation for alleged financial wrongdoing.
Corruption allegations have touched almost all the Palestinian Authority ministries, with one internal probe concluding that nearly half of the PA's $800 million 1996 budget had gone astray.
A report into the mismanagement and graft by top ministers and officials, endorsed by 57 votes to 1 in the Palestinian parliament on Thursday, gave Mr Arafat one month to sack his cabinet; although the parliament has no means of enforcing such a ruling, the signal to Mr Arafat of the urgent need for house-cleaning was unmistakable.
Apart from Mr Sh'ath, the report singled out the transport Minister, Mr Ali Qawasmeh, for investigation, and said the Civil Affairs Minister, Mr Jamil Tarifi, should be put on trial for financial violations.
All three have denied any wrongdoing.
Mr Arafat, who flies to Cairo today for talks with President Mubarak in the wake of Wednesday's Jerusalem suicide bombing and the consequent crisis in relations with Israel, is understood to have neither accepted nor rejected the mass resignation offer.
The resignations came during a four-hour meeting of the Palestinian cabonet in the West Bank town of Ramallah.
Mr Arafat's ministers have clearly acted, or been asked to act, to help ease the mounting pressure on his regime.
He must presumably now be planning a major cabinet reshuffle to help rehabilitate the plummeting status of his administration in the eyes of his own people.
But that reshuffle may well have to wait until he has negotiated his way through the immediate crisis with Israel.