As he tries to contend with the ongoing Palestinian uprising, Prime Minister Ehud Barak is facing problems on the domestic front, Peter Hirschberg writes. Opposition parties yesterday said they would bring a bill to disband the Israeli parliament to a vote next week, intensifying the threat to Mr Barak's political future.
The Israeli leader's ruling coalition imploded when several parties left his government after he announced he was attending the Camp David summit with Mr Arafat in July earlier this year. Since then he has headed a minority government. If the bill passes - at present the opposition appears to have a majority - it could well lead to early elections sometime next year between April and June.
After Monday's roadside bomb attack on the settler schoolbus in Gaza, Mr Barak called on opposition parties to join him in a government of national emergency - a move seen by some as an effort to salvage his political future. But the right-wing opposition parties, led by the hardline Likud Party, reacted with little enthusiasm.
Some opposition leaders insisted they would only join an emergency coalition if Mr Barak disavowed all understandings he had reached with the Palestinians at Camp David and if he adopted a much harsher approach in battling the Palestinians. "The government's policy of restraint," said Mr Eli Yishai, head of the powerful ultra-religious Shas party, "is causing the loss of Israel's deterrent power and its military capability".