Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said there is no turning back on his Gaza withdrawal plan, even after 100,000 Israelis mounted the biggest protest so far against evacuating Jewish settlers from the coastal strip.
"I decided to proceed with the disengagement plan because it is clear that Israel cannot remain in the Gaza Strip forever," his office quoted him as saying.
But Mr Sharon still faces more trouble from rebellious ministers of his own rightist Likud party who led a rally on Sunday night to denounce his bid to forge a unity government with the centre-left Labour party to carry out the Gaza pullout.
Addressing an officer training course, Mr Sharon insisted he "does not intend to go back on the plan in light of the severe ... economic and security situation Israel would find itself in if it had no diplomatic plan," his office said today.
Mr Sharon renewed his pledge on Sunday during a day-long protest in which settlers and their right-wing supporters formed a human chain stretching from Jerusalem to the Gaza Strip.
It was a fresh sign of the obstacles Mr Sharon must overcome to implement his US-backed blueprint for "disengaging" from conflict with the Palestinians by removing all 21 settlements in Gaza and four of 120 in the West Bank by the end of 2005.
Mr Sharon, once considered the godfather of the settler movement but now reviled by many of them as a traitor, failed to get his own party to support the plan, though he did succeed in winning cabinet approval in early June.
Palestinians welcome an Israeli pullout, but say Israel's main motive is to strengthen its hold on large swathes of occupied West Bank land.
Opinion polls show most Israelis would happily relinquish Gaza as too costly in money and blood, but many right-wingers are against giving up any land captured in the 1967 Middle East war, saying it would "reward Palestinian terror".