The Israeli government appears closer than ever to collapse following the resignation yesterday of the Foreign Minister, Mr David Levy.
The Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, insisted last night that his coalition would "continue its important work . . . until the year 2000", but other key ministers want him to call an early general election, and opposition parties have tabled a no-confidence motion in a bid to bring down the government next week.
In announcing his departure, Mr Levy invoked the same complaint that Arab peace negotiators have used against Mr Netanyahu - that the Prime Minister cannot be trusted to honour agreements - added his own lament about the inequalities of the 1998 national budgetary allocations, and summed up: "I've had it. Full stop."
Although parliamentary regulations specify a 48-hour waiting period before the resignation takes effect, and although Mr Netanyahu has urged him to reconsider, the Foreign Minister was adamant that he would not change his mind.
Mr Levy heads a five-strong coalition faction, Gesher, all of whose members, he said, were quitting the coalition with him. Their departure leaves Mr Netanyahu with the support of no more than 63 members of the 120seat Knesset, a perilously slender majority.
As Mr Netanyahu noted last night, previous governments have survived in similar circumstances, but his coalition is further weakened by the fact that it includes various unpredictable small factions and disgruntled individual politicians who cannot be relied upon to back him.
The first test of its stability without Mr Levy will come today, when Mr Netanyahu intends to seek approval for his overdue 1998 budget legislation.
Sensing that the coalition is now unprecedentedly vulnerable, the small left-wing opposition party, Meretz, has tabled a no-confidence motion for next week. Mr Ehud Barak, the opposition Labour Party leader, said last night that the government had no credibility and "its voters are embarrassed by it."
Mr Netanyahu, however, defended his policies and expressed confidence in his ability to move ahead with peace efforts - even with the more firmly right-wing cabinet that remains in Mr Levy's absence. The Prime Minister professed incredulity at Mr Levy's resignation, saying that most of the Foreign Minister's demands over the budget had been met.
Mr Netanyahu has survived numerous crises since winning general elections on May 29th, 1996, but this is the most severe. His popularity nationwide is falling, and he has very few loyalists left even inside his own Likud party. The Arab world in general, and the Palestinians in particular, would be delighted to see him fall - provided he were not replaced by an even harder-line prime minister.
The Clinton Administration has been signalling its anger and impatience with Mr Netanyahu over the collapsed peace efforts - first by declining to invite him to the White House at all and then, this weekend, by deliberately inviting him to come to Washington on January 20th, denying him breathing space to sort out his difficulties with Mr Levy.
In similar vein, the White House is insisting that its Middle East envoy, Mr Dennis Ross, hold talks with Palestinian and Israeli leaders in the region this week, the Levy crisis notwithstanding.
At his resignation press conference, the Foreign Minister spoke bitterly of his disappointment at the failure of the Netanyahu coalition to advance peace efforts, saying he had joined the government because he believed it had a real opportunity to "bring about peace [accords] which would win the support of the vast majority of the public". Sadly, many of his cabinet colleagues seemed to want to dodge and delay, he said.